


Darkness is Coming

by Farky_Fark_and_the_Munky_Bunch



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: ASOIAF Characters - Freeform, Blood and Violence, Darkest Dungeon Setting, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, It's a rough one folks, Lots of Darkest Dungeon references and incorporated quotes, Sexual Content, Spooky Eldritch Shit, lots of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-16 03:24:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 37,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21264284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farky_Fark_and_the_Munky_Bunch/pseuds/Farky_Fark_and_the_Munky_Bunch
Summary: There was a time when there was happiness in the hamlet, hope, and peace. But a great evil rose from the depths of the moor, one that was thought defeated, but only lie dormant. Too late, the townsfolk realized that the fervent prayers of their predecessors’ past should never have ceased, for the hamlet would fall into ruin once more. Darkness was coming.Major spoilers for the end of Darkest Dungeon.





	1. Driven from this Land

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, AO3! The idea for this story was actually created as a D&D three-shot by my fiancé the first time he DM’d for me like 5 years ago. The story that he came up with is contained in ch. 11-13, and after getting hints through the campaign about the larger DD/ASOIAF world he had created I decided to write the narrative version of what we played through, plus the events leading up to it. The only major change I made was the OC who stands in as my D&D PC, because I was playing as a tiefling monk named Punchy McDemonfists and that aesthetic does not mesh well with Darkest Dungeon. He’s still somewhat functionally the same, I just gave him a DD name, he’s human, and he’s a little less of a snarky asshole. Anyway, happy Halloween again! Have fun and stay safe!

Once, the hamlet was quiet, peaceful, happy even. Once.

But its mayor was a greedy man, and even as it flourished, his lust for power set events in motion that would bring the hamlet to ruin.

He lived alone in the mansion above the moor, though many women in questionable professions were well acquainted with its dark and twisting halls.

One night as he pored over the tomes in the mansion’s library, he came across a record of a great source of power hidden beneath the town and its surrounding lands. It spoke of a portal of antediluvian evil which would grant its master strength and influence beyond his wildest dreams.

He became consumed with his desire to have such for himself and in the beginning, he worked in secret. Curiosity, interest, obsession—these were the mile markers on his road to damnation. Shovel in hand, he began to excavate the areas beyond the hamlet’s borders: the ruins, the cove, the weald, the warrens.

One night, he stumbled across a scroll written in an ancient tongue, and when he spoke the words upon it, a dark magic was awakened within him. He experimented endlessly with his newfound abilities, testing them to their absolute limits.

After several weeks, he hired a team of scholars to aid him in his work, and as they perused the tomes in his library he slit their throats, one by one, before bringing them back to life. Pale and garbed in dark robes their voices hissed from ruined throats as they continued to work, bound to the mayor’s bidding even in their endless undeath.

Drawn to the man seeking similar power, a strange woman arrived in town, with herbs and medicines tied in bags about her loose gown. The mayor allowed her entry, intrigued by her studies, but with time the evil that seeped from beneath the manor infiltrated her mind and he found her one night in the graveyard, her mouth filled with rotted flesh and her eyes gleaming in cannibalistic frenzy. Repulsed, he banished her to the darkened groves of the weald and there she remained, a slathering testament to the powers of corruption.

With each day his thirst for power grew, and all manner of twisted beasts began to form beneath his hands. The hamlet’s livestock were fused with the demonic entities that controlled the strange portal and gained a bizarre and terrible sentience. A stupid and brutish creature was created from his attempted sacrifices and he left it with its kind in the warrens, perverse king of the swine within, thriving off the flesh of the townsfolk that the mayor gifted as sacrifice.

A young waif too innocent to realize what had become of her once trusted mayor sought him out for company and became his constant companion. Though for a time he was flattered by the child’s attentions, he tired of her swiftly. With his funds running low, he made a bargain with the pelagic fish-men of the cove, and as he left them he caught sight of her eyes, glittering in the darkness of her hiding place.

A malign inspiration rose inside of him at the sight of his innocent witness and in the dead of night he led her to the tepid waters and chained her to a dark idol, leaving her as his sacrifice. Buried in the treasures that he had been promised, he ignored the tortured screams that resonated in the night. Soon, they faded, and after a fortnight of eerie silence an enchanting song began to ebb nightly from the watery depths, drawing the men of the hamlet to their deaths and feeding the monsters that lie within.

Despite his strength, he wished for ever more power, and in his desperation to control the evil which he had unleashed, he grew careless. The townsfolk of the hamlet realized with great disquiet that something malevolent was being bred within their walls, and rumors quickly spread about the mayor’s sudden and gripping madness.

The townspeople feared their once just leader, and yet, they did nothing, for they did not know how to counter the power that he had been granted. A towering prophet walked through their midst, crying in the streets that the mayor was the harbinger of doom. Many an attempt was made on his life as the mayor sought to silence him, and yet come morning he always returned, his warbling voice sowing panic and despair.

Wary of the prophet’s power, and yet in need of an ally, the mayor conceded to the truth of his apocalyptic ravings and shared his plans with the man, in all their terrible detail. Driven mad by the vision of the portal before him, the prophet tore his own eyes from his skull and fled to the ruins where his rambling misfortunes continued on, unheard and unheeded.

Even his own men began to grow wary of his increasing madness, and the pirate crew which smuggled his treasures and artifacts into the hamlet demanded more gold to keep their silence, threatening to alert the neighboring villages of his actions if he did not comply. Furious with such a demand, the mayor gifted them with a magnificent gilded anchor, upon which he placed a curse, promising that he would do as they asked. As they sailed away, the anchor dragged them into the depths of the sea and there they drowned, only to be pulled anew from their watery grave and forced to haunt the waters of the cove.

When they could take the fear no longer, the townsfolk planned to act. They marched to the manor’s massive doors, and there they were met with only death. In his deep paranoia, the dark charlatan had anticipated such action and a band of brigands waited for them, a massive cannon at their center. As they marched, the cannon gave a mighty blast, and those who were not blown apart fled back to the hamlet, covered in the blood of those they loved.

Again and again they tried to strike back, to end the corruption that had poisoned their once peaceful town. After a time, the mayor’s reserves of gold ran dry, and the brigands that had once protected him left him at the mercy of his former subjects. Pitchforks and torches in hand, they advanced on the manor, and as they forced their way through to their mayor’s chamber, a single shot rang out, ending their misfortune.

For a short time, they believed that they were safe, but the mayor’s creatures still remained to torment them, and a few nights after they buried him, his grave was found open, and empty. The footsteps they found wound their way to the darkest dungeon beyond the hamlet, and there the sorcerer hid, now himself an undead puppet, wrenched from his cowardly death by the power of the portal’s magic.

By morning, the lands beyond the hamlet were spilling over with creatures of death and darkness, and they tore through the town in blind violence and obedience, following the orders of the man who controlled them. In the midst of the chaos a brave young woman sent out a plea for help. 

_To Whom it May Concern,_

_I do not know where this letter will go, nor if it will even make it beyond the hamlet I call home. But if you are reading this, please come to our aid, and come swiftly. Our mayor has destroyed our town with his evil, and if he is not stopped then we will all surely die._

_Please come. Please help. Please save us, before it’s too late._

She begged with her desperate words that someone would come and purge the evil from her home, and her letter found its answer in an honorable warrior from the North.

Her name was Catelyn Tully, and his, Eddard Stark.

He was a crusader, a stern man, but courageous, and with him came three other brave heroes. Alvor Clegane was a hound master, as loyal to his leader as his hound was to him. Vayon Poole was a grizzled war veteran, with a mace the size of a small child that had seen its fair share of blood. And at their rear, Lyanna Stark followed her brother unwaveringly, daggers flashing with startling alacrity in the midst of battle.

Together, they faced the demons and madmen conjured by the mayor, and each night returned victorious, but grim-faced and covered in blood. With each victory they came closer to breaking and as the hag’s cackling bounced around Vayon’s skull, Alvor spent his hours staring into nothingness, the words of the prophet ringing in his ears.

Eddard remained steadfast at the vanguard and Lyanna at their rear, and within several months, the evil beasts had been sent to their graves. Only the sorcerer himself remained, and he too would meet his end.

***************

“I don’t like this,” Alvor grumbled as they sat around their campfire. He had a bandage tied firmly about his arm, but a thin line of blood was beginning to seep through the linen once more. At his side his hound Tytos whined nervously. “I don’t like any of this.”

“This man has far more power than anyone rightfully should,” Vayon agreed, poking idly at the rough map between them with his mace. “We may not make it out of this one alive.”

“But if we don’t, they’ll write the most glorious songs about us,” Lyanna joked with a grin, the brim of her pointed hat pulled low over her brow. The others chuckled and relaxed at that, but only slightly. A thick tension still hung in the air.

“We will make it out alive,” Eddard said after a moment. “He is still nothing more than a man, and he can be killed like any other. We will defeat him as easily as we have his minions, and in doing so we will save the hamlet from his influence. We are not doomed to failure.” Though his words were inspiring, his tone held a hint of doubt.

The townsfolk had finally dared to hope again, but the heroes were not always so optimistic. They had sustained wounds that would never fully heal, and though they had pushed the darkness back at every turn, they still had to face the man himself, desperate to keep his hold on the power which he had sold his soul to attain.

“Well if Ned says it then it must be so,” his sister piped up again, teeth flashing from within the shadow cast over her features. Though it was said partly in jest, a glimmer of hope rose in the hearts of the adventurers, and as they snuffed out their fire and continued further into the dungeon, they began to believe that it might be true.

All manner of twisted creatures that ordinarily lived beyond the hamlet had fallen beneath the mayor’s dark influence, and the four heroes cut them down as they pushed ever onwards, deeper and deeper into the darkest dungeon.

When they reached the man, however, he stood alone, deathly pale, clothed in the robes of his office and with a gleam of insanity burning brightly in his dark eyes.

“You are here to stop me, but it cannot be done,” he said, his voice deep and strangely calm. “I am no longer merely a man. I have become their god, second only to the forces which gave birth to you and I. To our world.”

Eddard drew his sword and stood strong at the helm of their small party. “Then let us see if gods can still bleed.”

Lyanna struck first, twin daggers flying from her hips and striking him squarely in his chest. He in turn conjured some manner of dark abyssal magic and struck out with groping tentacles that twisted about their limbs and threatened to take their breath. 

The spell faded with his concentration as Tytos rushed toward him in a frenzy, and the three men recovered swiftly, advancing on the sorcerer. For every blow they landed, he stitched his rotting skin back together in patches, stopping the brackish blood that flowed from his veins.

They continued their onslaught unceasingly nonetheless and as they continued he became more desperate, his spells growing darker with every muttered breath. Haunting illusions made in his image rose from the ground, horrid masses of twisted flesh, growing further and further from humanity with each incarnation.

A crushing blow from Vayon’s mace sent the mayor reeling, and as his head swam, he reached within his robes, the movement hidden from Lyanna’s view by her brother’s body between them.

“A singular strike, Poole!” she cried out in praise as she spun the heavy pickaxe from her belt into her hand and charged forward. Eddard’s shout of warning fell on deaf ears, and as she crashed the axe into the stunned mayor’s head, he thrust out blindly with the dagger in his hand, striking her squarely in the stomach and dragging the blade across her abdomen as it opened and began to spill her entrails across her boots.

Her eyes were wide as she staggered backwards, and with a cry of rage and pain, Ned plunged his sword into the charlatan’s chest, tearing out a heart black with rot and dark magic. For a moment, it continued to pulse in his hands, held alive by sorcery alone as its master’s body shriveled and decayed. It was a heart of darkness, and as the eyes of the heroes were drawn to it, a strange and haunting familiarity filled their minds.

The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of Lyanna’s ragged breathing, and it shook them from their trance. As Eddard tried desperately to close the wound with what little healing magic he knew, she reached a hand out toward him.

“Ned…” He ignored her, bellowing at Alvor to bring him bandages. The hound master obeyed silently, but his leader could see in his eyes that he had already given up.

“Ned…” she said again, coughing up a mouthful of blood. Despite her pain, her lips curled into a grin and she met her brother’s gaze a final time before her eyes closed forever. “Make sure that they write a decent ballad about this, aye?”

The mayor’s heart stayed clutched tightly in Eddard’s fist as he carried his sister’s body back to the hamlet, a macabre trophy of their victory. She was buried beneath the walls of the abbey, and her headstone was inscribed by the men that had once traveled at her side.

_Here lies Lyanna Stark, hero of the hamlet. Let her song be sung forever more._

Though the heroes mourned, the hamlet celebrated their mayor’s death, and they began to see something long-absent in the faces of passersby—a glimmer of hope.


	2. Restored to Its Former Glory

Despite Lyanna’s death, the mayor’s defeat brought great relief and celebration. The evil had been purged, and while bandit clans and all manner of strange creatures still made their home in the various ruins beyond the town, they were no great threat. In the years that followed, peace returned to the hamlet once more and as the villagers rebuilt their lives, the heroes who had answered Catelyn’s call began theirs anew within the hamlet’s wooden walls.

In an abbey still strewn with rubble, Eddard and Catelyn were married, and though they had met in the most dire of situations their marriage was a happy one, and filled with love. With Ned acting as the new mayor the hamlet flourished once more and the recollections of its dark and not-so-distant past began to fade from its memory. 

As the years continued to pass the hamlet grew, and along with it, so too did its steadfast citizens. With the defeat of the evil which had gripped them for so long, the townsfolk found hope again, and love, and for many years following the sorcerer’s demise the hamlet saw a peace it hadn't experienced in what seemed like ages.

**************

Several years after Eddard’s arrival in the hamlet, Catelyn gave birth to their first child, a boy they named Robb. Ned made as great a father as he did a mayor, and in time, they had four more children, each greatly loved by their parents.

Robb grew to be as honorable a man as his father, and he too carried God’s crusade to the brigands that sought to claim the lands beyond the hamlet. When Eddard’s time was over, he would make a fine mayor in his father’s stead, and bring the hamlet both prosperity and goodwill.

Two girls followed: Sansa and Arya. Sansa was a sweet child, shy, and polite, and with a great fondness for songs and stories. Arya, on the other hand, had inherited the same lively recklessness that her aunt Lyanna had once possessed, and Catelyn more than had her hands full with the hellion that she grew to become.

Brandon arrived two years after Arya, another son to carry on the Stark name. Bran was thoughtful and quiet, and wanted nothing more than to be a crusader like his father and brother. On his first expedition into the ruins however, he was caught beneath falling debris from the excavations of old and lost the use of his legs. To keep himself busy after the accident, he took a fancy to collecting and cataloging the many strange trinkets that the townsfolk found in the tunnels which the former mayor had once dug. Even so, he still listened to stories of his father’s heroism with longing and silent despair.

And Rickon, the youngest of the Starks, was much like his sister Arya: rebellious and rash. His wild nature led him oft beyond the hamlet’s walls and though Catelyn worried, he always returned in the night, bloodied but alive.

They lived within the hamlet, forsaking the former hall of the mayor, for it had degraded under the wicked sorcerer’s care, and was said to still be cursed with the remnants of his dark magic.

It was a family of brave warriors and gentle hearts and under their care the hamlet knew good again. Though the children trained to fight the threats that lie beyond, the memory of the evil that had come before their birth was distant in their minds. At least, for a time.

**************

“It’s time that you knew the whole truth of what happened,” Ned said gravely. Catelyn rocked baby Rickon in her arms and gave her husband a sorrowful but encouraging smile. The children looked at him solemnly.

“This is where your aunt Lyanna is buried. She was a brave and fearless woman, but in the end she died to save the hamlet.”

“Do you sing for her father?” Sansa asked, her eyes wide and uncomprehending as she read the words engraved on the stone before her.

Eddard smiled sadly at that and knelt down beside his eldest daughter. “That’s why I’m showing you this. So none of us ever forget the price we were forced to pay for our peace.”

Though she did not truly grasp the gravity of her father’s words, Sansa nodded. Only Robb looked at the gravestone with true understanding, while Arya scuffed her feet in the dirt, Bran picked up a worm in his chubby fingers, and Rickon fussed in his mother’s arms. With a heavy heart, Ned laid a bouquet of flowers at his sister’s grave, and as he rose to his feet, he prayed that no further blood would be spilled in their home.

It was only when he stood before the God he served that he realized how foolish such a wish had been.

**************

Alvor Clegane took an arbalest as his wife, a valued member of the city guard. They met in the process of rebuilding, and the headstrong Lady Clegane was a good match for her husband’s quiet solemnity. Soon, Tytos lost the attention he had once been given as a son joined their household. They named him Gregor, and from a young age he suffered from debilitating aches in his skull that sent him into fits of uncontrollable rage. They lived in fear for their son’s life for many years and though they prayed, he never recovered. Soon, they lost hope.

A second son was born two years later, and they named him Sandor. He was not like his brother, for he was a curious and reserved boy. Born in the year between Robb and Sansa, he spent much time with the eldest Stark as a child, but never truly grew close with him. Instead he followed his father, always close at his heels alongside Tytos. The townsfolk teased him with the nickname “Hound” for the time he spent with the gruff hound master, and as he grew, he came to embrace the name, venturing deep into the warrens with a helm carved in the snarling likeness of his father’s constant companion.

Sandor was already nearing his tenth nameday when his mother became pregnant once more. Though they had not planned on another child, it was happy news.

They could not have predicted that it would break their family apart.

**************

“Bandages, quickly.” The vestal spoke in a hushed but urgent tone and the woman lying in the bed looked about through tear-filled eyes.

“Alvor…is she okay?”

The hound master nodded, taking his wife’s hand and holding it tightly as another one of the healers hurried over and took Elinor from her mother’s side.

“Yes, love. And she’s beautiful. She looks just like you.”

She smiled weakly at that, but her skin was quickly growing pale, and the vestals’ frantic attempts to save her failed at every turn. No amount of healing could stop the flow of her blood.

“Take care of her,” she whispered, her eyes unfocused but searching the room for a glimpse of her daughter. When they could not find her they settled on Sandor and she smiled weakly at her son while he stared at her with eyes filled with fear.

“No,” Alvor choked, dropping his head in his hands. “No.” His tears fell to stain the blanket that they pulled over his wife’s body and there he remained, long after her hand had gone cold in his grasp.

As his father and brother mourned, Gregor looked on with disinterest, and Elinor was left to cry.

**************

The woman that captured Vayon Poole’s heart was a gentle young vestal, one of the abbey’s most dedicated disciples. They too were wed, and though they watched Eddard and Alvor’s children with great fondness, their family refused to grow.

It was only by some miracle that they were finally able to conceive, and a daughter was born to them soon after Ned and Catelyn were blessed with Sansa’s birth.

The girls became fast friends, though Jeyne grew to be a quiet and skittish girl, distrusting and insecure. While Sansa sought to explore the lands beyond the hamlet, Jeyne remained within the walls, and so the eldest Stark girl was forced to find company with others on her adventures.

**************

“Come on, Jeyne,” Sansa begged her friend, hands clasped over her chest in a gesture of supplication. “I only want to sketch the scenery. The cove is so pretty at sunset.”

Stubbornly, Jeyne shook her head. “There are terrible things in the cove,” she insisted. “Monstrous crabs and fish-men with jagged spears.” She trembled at the mere thought, her eyes wide with fear. “I’ll never go there.”

“There are no such things,” Sansa chastised impatiently, her hands moving to rest petulantly on her hips. “And even if there were, Father and Robb would be able to defeat them.”

“There are so,” Jeyne warned ominously. “I’ve heard my father’s stories, of what happened before we were born. A girl just like us was chained and sacrificed to those monsters. I won’t go, Sansa, I won’t.”

When Sansa sighed in frustration, a voice came from behind them, not yet as deep as it would become, but already gruff like his father’s.

“Where do you want to go, little bird?” Sandor leaned against the fence upon which Sansa had propped herself. 

Sandor Clegane had become a serious and suspicious young man, very much unlike his former self, and it made Eddard uneasy. He was sure that something had occurred within the walls of the Clegane household to shape the boy’s increasingly distant and abrasive ways, and a part of him feared that the evil of the mayor had seeped into the hamlet once more.

He could not, however, keep his own children from his influence and in particular, the boy took a strange fascination in young Sansa, seemingly determined to break her ever optimistic and innocent spirit.

“To the cove,” she replied, tucking a lock of hair behind an ear tipped with a growing flush. “But Jeyne is too afraid to go.”

The older boy considered it for a moment before replying. “I’ll go with you.”

Though Sansa hated to leave her friend behind in the hamlet as she always did, she was grateful for the company, and always felt safe when Sandor was at her side. They walked beyond the walls in silence, and had ventured just to the edge of the sandy beach when Sansa stopped.

Lying on his back in the sand with his arms behind his head, Sandor watched her delicately glide a stick of charcoal across the parchment in her lap, and after a long moment, he spoke.

“Do you ever wonder if the hamlet will fall again?” 

“No,” Sansa replied honestly, continuing to sketch the entrance of the cove that lay beyond the town. The sparkling water looked enchanting in the light of the setting sun, but the shadows which fell across it hid terrible things from their view. “We’ve all heard the stories that father tells of the evil mayor and the witches and swine he controlled. But he was defeated. Now the worst we have to face is the bandits in the ruins and the cultists in the warrens.”

A small band of humans dedicated to the former mayor’s evil deeds had made their home within the warrens, but they paid little heed to the hamlet and instead focused their attentions deep beneath the ground, searching endlessly for the portal that had once been uncovered.

“You don’t truly believe that it ever really happened do you?” Sandor asked incredulously, his thick brows furrowed over the strong, harsh features that were quickly marking him as a boy no longer. “You think it’s all just songs don’t you, little bird?” He had given her the nickname long ago to match his own and to reflect her love of nature, but he had developed a tendency to use it mockingly in regard to her preference for fairy tales and romance.

Sansa pursed her lips and her chest heaved in a sigh, pushing uncomfortably against the laces of her gown. She too would not be a child for much longer.

“Of course I do, but I told you…it’s all long behind us now. It’s not as though history is doomed to repeat itself.” She sighed again. “Must you be this way, Sandor?” she asked him. “We’re happy here. Isn’t that enough?”

He shrugged, crossing his arms over his broad chest and turning his troubled gaze to the blackness of the cove as the sun sank below the horizon. “For now.”


	3. The First of Many Has Fallen

In the end, more than fifteen years passed since the heroes’ great victory before evil found its place in the hamlet once more. Though the dark portal was not at its source, this new corruption was bred from within the cursed town’s walls just as the mayor’s iniquity had been. Rather than from greed and lust, however, it was born of cruelty and hatred. As he grew, Gregor Clegane became a brutal and vicious man, terrifyingly close in temperament to some of the slavering beasts that the sorcerer had once controlled.

Seeking out the weakest in the village as his victim, Gregor turned his dark attentions toward Elinor. She was but a child, hardly more than four years old, and she did not understand the anger that her brother held toward her. 

In an attempt to save his sister, Sandor took the brunt of Gregor’s abuse, vaguely explaining away his bruises and scars when Sansa’s concerned gaze fell upon them. Alvor turned a blind eye, too afraid to face the truth of his son’s nature and still grieving the loss of his wife. At fourteen, Sandor had to be the one to hold his sister as she cried, scared and confused.

One day, as Sandor accompanied his father into the crumbling ruins to drive away a meddling group of cultists, Gregor’s anger found its outlet in Elinor at last. When they returned, she was found dead in her bed, her pale neck marred with bruises that fit perfectly beneath Gregor’s massive hands.

Afraid that the hamlet would fall again despite their efforts, Eddard cast the boy out into the wilderness and the weight of his sister’s death fell heavily on Sandor’s shoulders. He smiled little after Elinor’s body was laid to rest beside Lyanna’s, and the man he grew to become was bitter and caustic. He had been forced to see the truth of the world too soon, and it had left its mark.

**************

“It’s too heavy,” Jeyne Poole complained as her father tried once again to teach her how to use a crossbow. She had recently celebrated her twentieth nameday, and though she still spent her time avoiding what lie beyond town unlike her friends, Ned had gently urged her to learn to defend herself, lest one day she be forced to.

“It isn’t even,” Arya said from beside her, almost absently tossing a dagger at the target across the yard. It struck the center squarely, buried to the hilt. 

“Don’t be rude,” Sansa reprimanded her sister quietly.

Arya rolled her eyes and Sansa was preparing herself for a sterner chastisement when a shout rang across the yard.

“Sansa!”

It was Alvor Clegane who spoke, hurrying across the hamlet toward the young woman as she carefully polished her light mace. She too had learned to fight at her father’s behest, and though she preferred the healing arts which she had learned as an apprentice vestal in the sanitarium, she could wield the weapon at her side with deadly precision and it had spilled its share of blood.

“Yes?” She looked up as he approached, brows furrowed slightly in concern.

“It’s Sandor,” the aging hound master replied, breathing heavily. At his side, his hound whined nervously, his tail between his legs. As Tytos had grown older, he had been bred with a bitch of good stock, and though Alvor still kept him close at home, it was Tywin that now fought at his side. “He was out near the ruins alone and a group of bandits ambushed him.”

The worry in Sansa’s eyes shifted to panic and she rose hastily to her feet, hurrying after him to the cramped and sterile quarters where she spent most of her time.

In the years that followed his sister’s death, Sandor sought various methods to distract himself from his guilt. Sansa had pretended not to notice him disappearing into the lower level of the inn with the busty young women who made their living in the arms of desperate men, but she spent those nights crying silently into her pillow as she sought sleep, and her father noted with absent suspicion that the various women who had turned Sandor Clegane into a man all bore some vague resemblance to his eldest daughter.

He found no peace in such experiences, however, and in time, he merely impatiently brushed away the groping caresses of the brothel women and turned from the hamlet instead.

Killing seemed to give him some measure of relief and so he spent little time at home, venturing off into the ruins instead and bringing back what meager riches he found to the hamlet. He had been wounded many times in the course of battle, and each time, Sansa patiently healed him, though secretly she worried that one day she would be unable to save him.

When she arrived, Sandor was angrily swatting away the probing hands of the sanitarium’s healers and cursing their efforts. Though he sustained injury on a regular basis, his mother’s death had left him with a deep distrust for the healing power of the vestals; save one.

Sansa spoke quietly as she approached his side. “I’ll take care of this.”

The other healers obeyed the words of their mayor’s daughter and abandoned their efforts, some with visible relief. When Sandor caught sight of her, he stilled, and his expression softened slightly.

“Your father told me that you went out alone. Again.” The reprimand in her words was clear, and Sandor glowered moodily.

“I’m fine, little bird,” he grumbled. “It’s just a few scratches.”

His father hovered by the door with a worried expression on his face as Sansa settled in the chair beside Sandor and began to assess his injuries. Though the others had found happiness in the wake of the mayor’s death, Alvor’s life had brought nothing but darkness, and he watched over his younger son protectively, afraid to lose the only family he had left.

“A few scratches that could very well get infected. Are you so determined to lose a limb and bear horrid scars for the rest of your life?” Sansa’s expression held no room for argument and Sandor huffed irritably, his cheeks flushing slightly beneath her disapproving gaze.

Satisfied by his concession, however reluctant it was, she applied a thick herbal salve to the cut, praying that it would heal swiftly and not leave another scar against his deeply tanned skin. He already had far too many.

With the poultice that remained, she treated the shallower cuts across his chest, struggling to keep the blush from her cheeks. Sandor’s penchant for battle and his time spent training in the yard with both sword and axe had molded him into a veritable giant when he reached manhood. He towered over her easily, nearly seven feet in height, and his body was heavily and impressively muscled. Though Sansa tried to focus on her attempts to heal him, his toned chest and abdomen did not escape her notice. In truth, it had been many years since they had.

Sandor watched as she wrapped a bandage around his arm, and winced when she tightened it. “Fuck. Now you’re hurting me, girl.” Her expression darkened slightly at the address and she tugged at the bandage once more out of spite before tying it.

Alvor watched silently with Tywin at his side. Even in his unending grief he was not blind to the regard that his son held for the mayor’s pretty young daughter, and though he liked the girl well enough, he was afraid that whatever curse had befallen him would burden Sandor as well, and bring only despair to the two of them.

“If you go out on your own again I’ll show you what pain is,” she threatened him, jabbing a finger against his chest. “You’re a rash man, Sandor Clegane. And a fool.”

Though he opened his mouth to argue, she silenced him with a glare and he shut it again, scowling deeply. They met each other’s anger evenly for a moment before Sansa softened again with a sigh.

“Must you be so reckless?” She asked it almost in a plea, her blue eyes growing watery as she toyed absently with the holy symbol about her neck.

“How else could I have an excuse to let you take care of me?”

Sansa’s heart leapt at his words, but his smirk belied them as jest and it sank once more as she struggled to suppress her feelings. She had been doing such for many years, and though she thought it would get easier in time they had only grown closer as they had aged. Now that she a woman grown, she found it increasingly difficult to deny the sensations that rose in her chest, and in other places, at even the mere sight of him.

“You can take care of yourself,” she replied, almost in a whisper. “You always have.”

To that, he had no response, and to avoid the pain in her gaze Sandor looked to where his father still remained in the doorway. “Go on home,” he urged wearily. “I’ll be there once Sansa’s finished her work.”

In the time since Elinor’s death, he had grown distant from his father, and where once he was called Hound for his unending devotion to the man that had raised him, the name had instead become a testament to his loyalty and ferocity in battle. Now, all he felt toward Alvor was pity and resentment.

As the hound master retreated, leaving the two of them alone, Sansa sighed and spoke again.

“Why did you do it?”

Sandor hesitated for a long moment. In truth, he did not know why he was so reckless with his own life. Perhaps because he still believed that it should have him who died instead of Elinor. Perhaps because every bandit, swine, and fish-man he killed brought him a twisted and fulfilling satisfaction that he craved and had been unable to find between the thighs of any whore.

“I heard a rumor,” he said eventually. Though not the whole truth, it was still an honest answer.

“There’s talk of a brigand from the west building some sort of an army. They call him the Vvulf and say that he’s as big as a fucking mountain, and clothed only in the furs of the wolves that he’s killed in the forests and the skins that he’s taken from those he’s murdered.”

“Do you think that’s true?” Sansa asked, aghast. Her face had gone pale at the description and she looked ill at ease.

“I don’t know,” Sandor replied honestly. “I didn’t want to believe it, but I decided to investigate.” He gestured to the harsh red lines that marked his most recent wounds. “What happened to me is proof enough that something’s damn well changed. The bandits never used to bring our battles to us. They’re growing bold, and perhaps this ‘Vvulf’ is the reason for that.”

Her expression troubled, the young healer nodded, and she busied herself for a moment with cleaning the salve from his chest and muttering an incantation, her hand clenched tightly about the cross that hung from her neck. As the cuts began to close, she met his gaze again.

“I may not always be here to mend your wounds.”

His grey eyes held her gaze for a long moment. “Where else would you be, little bird?”

She tore her eyes from his and folded her hands in her lap, struggling to hold back tears. “Our parents’ victory may have saved the hamlet, but our lives are not without danger.” Her voice grew soft for a moment. “I…” Swallowing thickly, she sighed and looked to him again. “Your father could not bear to lose you.”

When he spoke again, Sandor’s voice was quiet and sincere. “I’ll be more careful, little bird. I promise.”

And for a time, he was. Though the rumors of Vvulf and his army continued to spread, the hamlet still lived in relative peace, and for a time, its troubles were no more than the occasional brigand skirmish in the ruins and the perpetual woes of unconfessed love.


	4. In Sheep's Clothing

Nearly two decades passed after Gregor was turned away, and the hamlet’s elders began to believe that they had made their peace with the world after all. Eddard Stark was nearing his sixtieth nameday when a man appeared at the city gates, clad in dark hooded robes and a devious, thin-lipped grin. At his side was a masked man in motley garb, the blade at his hip wickedly sharp.

“Welcome to the hamlet,” Eddard greeted, but there was no warmth in his tone. The mere sight of them made his blood run cold.

“Many thanks,” the strange man replied. “We have been traveling for several weeks to reach your hamlet. My name is Qyburn, and I am a historian of sorts.” The man’s teeth flashed beneath the shadow of his hood and for a moment, Ned was in that cursed dungeon again, watching his sister smile beneath the brim of her hat even as she lay dying. “And this is my companion, Jaqen H’ghar.”

“What is it that you seek within my walls?” Ned asked.

“Your history of course,” Qyburn replied. “I have heard that it is a long and storied one, and one in which I might find things of great interest.”

Though Ned did not trust them, he was not the sort of man to deny kindness to strangers, and so he let them in, but watched them closely. Catelyn shared his feelings toward the two, but Arya found herself intrigued and did not shy from them as the others did.

**************

“You keep strange company.”

Qyburn looked up as Arya sat beside him at the inn, and then followed her gaze to where Jaqen sat alone in the corner.

“They used to call him the Jester,” he replied thoughtfully. “He thinks life is the greatest joke and the only time he laughs is when his blade is wet with blood. Perhaps the name itself is meant to be the jest.”

Arya regarded him closely, studying his features. Beneath the mask and jingling cap, he was handsome, and the curved blade at his hip was the sharpest she had ever seen. He was captivating, and deadly, she had no doubt.

As though aware of her thoughts, he turned his head and met her gaze. Boldly, she held his stare, and when she was finally forced to look away, she could still feel his eyes, their weight heavy on her back.

**************

“Goddamn it, girl. Would you stop fussing?”

Sansa pursed her lips at Sandor’s petulant whine and continued to circle him, occasionally brushing flecks of nearly invisible dirt from his cloak.

“This is a great honor,” she replied, finally stopping and resting her hands on her hips. “You’re to be the captain of the guard.”

“I know it is,” Sandor replied grumpily. “But you don’t have to fucking _preen_ me, little bird.”

Her expression was not one of amusement.

Before she could argue, Eddard walked in, and with a slight blush, Sansa receded from Sandor’s side. The briefest hint of a smile graced the mayor’s ordinarily grave features at their sudden chagrin, and he looked toward his daughter.

“Could you give Sandor and I a moment alone please?”

“Yes father,” she demurred, hurrying from the room with only a single backwards glance. Ned watched as Sandor’s eyes followed her movement, and he cleared his throat pointedly.

The younger man’s gaze snapped back and he straightened up, at least having to decency to look apologetic. “Ser.”

Growing serious once more, Ned sighed. “I wanted to thank you for accepting this position.” When Sandor merely nodded, he continued. “Your mother was a great warrior and fought bravely in defense of the hamlet. It was an honor to know her and I have no doubt that she would be proud of you.”

Out of respect, Sandor disguised his reflexive snort with a cough. He thought it fortunate that she had not lived long enough to see the men that her sons had become. “Thank you, ser.”

The former captain of the guard had fallen to an aggressive band of brigands, and in light of the manner of this death, Eddard did not hesitate to name Sandor as his successor. Though the young man was brash and had a caustic tongue, there was no denying his prowess in battle, and he had earned the respect of the other townsfolk long ago.

“Train the men as you see fit and defend the hamlet as you desire, I trust you with that,” Ned continued. “But I must urge you to waste no time. Jory’s death was proof enough that the Vvulf’s men are growing ever bolder.”

Sandor nodded and the aging mayor sighed heavily before speaking again.

“Do not ignore the threats within our walls, however. I do not trust the historian or the jester that follows him.”

“Nor do I,” Sandor rumbled, his expression darkening. He had caught Qyburn’s gaze on Sansa more than once, and did not trust the man’s intentions. “I give you my word, ser, whatever may come, we will be prepared. The hamlet will not fall again.”

**************

Though not a part of his plans, the increasing threat of the brigand army in the lands beyond the hamlet proved to be quite a boon for the traveling historian. The holy and honorable mayor was preoccupied with the rumors of Vvulf’s command, growing ever darker, and the newly appointed captain of the guard was more concerned with the attentions of Sansa Stark than whatever threats may have faced the hamlet. He had made a point to be caught eyeing the pretty young woman in Clegane’s presence in the hopes that it would throw suspicion on intentions far from his true reason for being in the little town.

In the dead of night, while the townsfolk slept, Qyburn was able to make his way undetected to the crumbling ruins that looked down upon the moor, where once his father had ruled.

His mother had lived with her shame for many years, but on her deathbed, had confessed to her son that his father had once been the world’s most powerful sorcerer and had been cut down by the sword of Eddard Stark before his birth.

The tomes in the mansion’s library told of a power that knew no bounds, and of the dark and twisted monsters that had once risen beneath his ancestor’s hands. Following his father’s notes, he was able to find the portal that had once been opened, and though it had long since been resealed, it would not lie dormant forever.

In the beginning, Jaqen accompanied him, wandering the mansion’s halls in silence, or perhaps, disquiet. He and Qyburn had known each other since they were children, and though they had never been friends, the jester had sought a change, and agreed to travel alongside the charlatan to the hamlet in the moors.

“Did you know that my mother wrote him a letter?”

Though he presumed the question to be rhetorical, Jaqen shook his head, absently brushing the dust from the railing of the descending stairwell.

“She wrote to tell him of my birth,” Qyburn continued, his fingers almost lovingly stroking the pages of his father’s journal. “And he laughed her aside. Claimed that he had fathered no child from a profligate whore.”

Jaqen followed him in silence, further and further downward, following the crude map in the charlatan’s notes. They ended at a crumbling wall, no longer keeping at bay the tunnels that lay beyond. Blood red light flooded the darkened halls beneath the manor, and at their center was its source.

“He denied me my birthright,” Qyburn mused, his expression one of terrifyingly calculated anger. “And so my mother fed me from the meager copper she earned from the spreading of her perfumed thighs. I should have been living as a king, and instead, he cast me out as a beggar on the streets.”

For many years, Jaqen had listened to Qyburn’s tales of treachery and betrayal, but as he stood before the ghastly portal, he finally tore himself away.

“The people here have been nothing but kind to us.” His mask hid the revulsion that he felt in the face of such evil. “What you’re doing can only bring ruin.”

“I am not my father,” Qyburn replied flatly, his eyes tethered to the portal.

Shaking his head in disgust, Jaqen left him behind and the sorcerer did not turn to see him go. The portal called to him, and he would not resist its pull.

“I will be more than he ever dreamed he could be.”

**************

“What are you doing wandering about so late at night?”

Jaqen was startled from his thoughts, and lifted his gaze to see Arya Stark perched on a low-hanging branch above him, daggers and whetstone in hand.

“Clearing my head,” he replied. He did not know what Qyburn was planning to do in the crumbling ruins and in truth, he did not wish to.

“And what is it full of, Jaqen H’ghar?” she asked, nimbly leaping down to his side. “Jests and laughter I suppose?” Her grey eyes twinkled with mirth, and yet there was a deep curiosity behind her gaze, as though she truly wished to know what occupied his thoughts.

“Things too terrible to name,” he said, and the glint in her eyes was snuffed out. They grew dark with something that he could not quite identify, but that was grievously tempting.

“Try me.”

**************

In the light of day, Qyburn remained the curious historian, asking Eddard questions about the hamlet’s past, though he had already found their answers written in his father’s journals. The mayor spoke gravely of a dark age when he had first arrived in the hamlet, and the wicked gleam in Qyburn’s eyes was hidden by the shadow of his cowl.

He remained for nearly a year, and with each day that passed, he grew farther from the minds of the townsfolk, suspicious though they still were. Patiently, he waited for their guard to fall.

In that time, Arya grew close to the jester that had once stood at his side, far closer than Eddard and Catelyn would have liked. They had watched Sansa dance around her feelings for Sandor Clegane for many years with absent amusement, but Arya’s fascination with Jaqen H’ghar troubled them greatly.

They spent much of their time beyond the hamlet’s walls, and in a darkened corner of the warrens, they finally succumbed to the strange pull between them. Their breathy moans echoed in the shadowy halls, and as words of love were murmured in a moment of frenzied passion, something awakened far beneath the earth, something that would spell their doom.

**************

“I don’t trust him,” Eddard repeated stubbornly, and at his side, Catelyn nodded in agreement. “You hardly know him.”

“You and mother knew each other for as long as I’ve known him,” Arya retorted, her expression one of blatant fury. Sansa stood at her side, wringing her hands nervously. Though she wanted her sister to be happy, she did not like to stand against their father.

“And I love him.”

“Think sensibly, Arya,” Robb said patiently. In an attempt to dissuade what he saw as madness, Ned had brought anyone who he thought could sway his young daughter. So far, she had only grown more obstinate, and he feared that he was fighting a battle that he would not win.

“I am thinking sensibly,” she snapped. “I’m a grown woman and I can make my own decisions.” Her eyes burned, and challenged anyone to stand against her. When Catelyn opened her mouth to speak, Arya impulsively lashed out once more. “I’m going to marry him, Mother. And you can’t stop it.”

The possibility of marriage had not been addressed, and its sudden arrival brought a stunned silence to the room.

“That’s right,” Arya hissed, eyes gleaming in triumph. “We’re going to be married, with the whole hamlet as witness. You’ll see that you were wrong about him. You all will.”

**************

Though surprised by his lover’s sudden recklessness, Jaqen agreed to be married. He knew that he loved her, but a part of him wanted to avoid such frivolities, for he did not know how much time they had to be together. Qyburn was spending less and less time in the hamlet, and he feared what the sorcerer was doing beyond its walls.

With Sansa’s help, Arya prepared to be wed, and Jaqen simply loved her while he could, and often. He tried to memorize every inch of her skin and map it out with his touch as her bed rocked beneath their weight. The squeaking of the springs set a rhythm to the thoughts that pounded through his head, and when he dreamt, they continued, growing ever darker.

As the hamlet helped with the upcoming wedding, it turned its gaze from Qyburn, and he found his chance at last, spending every waking second on his knees before the horrid portal, gaping and spewing its foul magic. A fortnight before the day, he met in the groves of the weald with a monster of a man, an army of brigands at his back.

The Vvulf spoke of vengeance against those who had wronged him, and Qyburn’s silver tongue promised that and so much more.


	5. More Blood Soaks the Soil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Head's up, this is the chapter that gives this story the bulk of its warnings, so be aware.

The abbey, usually dim and awe-inspiring, had been decorated with flickering torches, bouquets of flowers and intricate lines of ribbon. Despite Arya’s protestations, Sansa had insisted that her sister embrace all of the gaieties of a wedding, and in the end, she had agreed.

Her gown too had been sewn by Sansa’s gifted hands, and though Arya had grumbled irritably through the process, she hadn’t been able to hide her smile when she finally donned the dress on the morning of her wedding.

Though a solemn silence reigned in the pews as the townsfolk watched their mayor’s daughter walk down the aisle on her father’s arm, they wore smiles, for the joy of a wedding was much appreciated, and had been long awaited.

Sansa stood near the altar, and as she watched Arya make her way to Jaqen’s side, her gaze shifted and found Sandor standing against the wall at the back. Though she had urged him to dress for the occasion, he still wore the armor befitting his position, and his sword gleamed at his hip as he stood with his arms crossed over his chest. 

His eyes met hers when they flicked in his direction and the slight smirk that tugged at his lips made her blush and quickly look away again. In truth, it was not Arya’s wedding that the hamlet had been anticipating.

Jaqen’s typically unreadable features softened at the sight of his soon-to-be bride, and Arya smiled back as she took her place opposite him.

As motivated as her decision had been by her naturally rebellious nature, Arya knew as she looked at the man before her that it had been the right one. No matter what happened in the future, she knew that with him at her side, she would always endure.

The old man known in the hamlet as the Caretaker stood between them, his slightly manic eyes flicking between the two as he prepared to officiate their marriage.

A hush fell over the abbey as he raised his hands. “Today may our hearts be glad and our spirits be light.” His stained teeth bared in a grin, and the bride and groom exchanged smiles.

“There is a time and season for every purpose under heaven. Today is the time for a marriage, and for happiness. To this day, Arya Stark and Jaqen H’ghar bring the joy in their hearts as a gift to one another. They bring their shared dreams which tie them together, and they bring the seeds for their future, out of which will grow their life together.”

He hesitated only briefly, and as he opened his mouth to continue, the silence was violently shattered. The doors to the abbey slammed open with sudden and tremendous force, and with a crack and cloud of smoke, a shot rang out, the bullet burying itself in the center of the altar.

Within seconds, the townsfolk began to panic, reaching for the weapons at their sides only to remember that they had been left at home for the occasion. It was the only time the hamlet would be unprepared for the battle that they feared would soon come, and it had been calculated with terrifying and cunning precision by a man who thrived on chaos just as his father once had.

The brigand that stood in the doorway was reloading his musket when a dagger lodged itself in his throat. At the end of the aisle, Arya stood with a second between her teeth, her gown hiked up to reveal the sheath she had concealed beneath.

“Everybody out!” Sandor bellowed as the man fell to his knees. “Get to your homes! Grab what weapons you have and barricade the doors! Guards, rally in the square!”

Terrified and panicked, the people of the hamlet obeyed, rushing in a mob towards the doors. A massive cannonball met them as they tried to flee, and those who survived its blast ran towards their homes drenched in blood and gore. Jeyne, leading the charge in blind fear, lie in pieces beneath her father’s boots as he ran, what remained of her dress stained crimson.

Eddard and Catelyn urged their children out behind the masses, the former carrying Bran in his arms. As Sansa passed, Sandor gripped her by the elbow and drew her to him. 

“Hide, little bird,” he ordered, sword drawn and already dripping with blood though it had yet to be used. “Don’t fight. Just hide. I won’t lose you.”

As Sansa’s lower lip began to tremble, Arya stepped forward, her eyes fierce and blazing. “We won’t just sit back and let them slaughter us like sheep.”

“If you don’t then you’ll die,” Sandor snapped. “Run, hide, and don’t come out until I come back for you.”

Obediently, Sansa turned and fled in tears, and when Arya hesitated, he barked at her impatiently. “Go with your sister. _Now!_”

Relenting, Arya followed with Jaqen at her side, and Sandor made sure that everyone still alive had gotten out of the abbey before running out into the streets. A second cannon blast shattered the doors just after he passed between them.

All around, buildings were aflame and the sounds of terror echoed over the din of steel and gunfire. The hamlet was swarming with brigands, daggers and pistols flashing in the light of the flames, and at their center the cannon sat, its wide mouth gaping as another sixteen pound ball was fitted inside it. At its side was their leader, the man they called the Vvulf.

He towered over the men that he commanded, well over seven feet in height and muscled like an ox. A wolf’s head obscured his features, but as Sandor appeared from the abbey, he let out a booming laugh and lifted a hand to move the grisly cowl aside.

“We meet again, brother.”

***********

Robb and Rickon were already dragging furniture towards the door when Sansa and Arya shouldered their way in. Catelyn gave a cry of relief at the sight of them, but Arya swiftly dragged Sansa away, hurrying toward their chambers at the rear of the house.

“Get your mace,” Arya commanded.

“But Sandor—” Sansa began weakly, her face pale and splattered with blood. The image of Jeyne’s broken body would not leave her mind.

“I know what Sandor said,” Arya snapped as Jaqen returned from her room with his curved blade in hand. “But if we don’t fight, then he’ll die.”

The shock written on her features was momentarily replaced with fear at her sister’s words, and Arya’s voice grew quiet, soothing, persuasive. “He needs you.”

The thought of Sandor’s death was too much to bear, and so Sansa obeyed, retrieving her mace and returning with determination in her eyes. Without a backwards glance, the three of them escaped through Arya’s window and joined in the fray.

***********

“Gregor.”

“They call me the Vvulf now,” Gregor snarled. “And they do not fear my strength as Eddard Stark did. I will have his head for casting me aside.”

“You’re doing this for vengeance?” He gestured toward the bodies behind him, mutilated beyond recognition by the cannon blast.

Gregor laughed at that. “We were promised both vengeance and gold. Enough gold to keep us rich for the rest of our lives.”

“By who?” Sandor asked. Brandishing his sword, he prepared to end his brother’s life, but a cry from nearby caught his attention.

“Sandor!” 

Their father stood a few feet away, held firmly in the grip of one of Gregor’s brigands. A pistol sat squarely at his temple, and by his feet, Tywin lay dying, his muzzle red with blood.

Without a sideways glance, Gregor spoke, and his disciple listened. “Kill him.”

With a cry of rage, Sandor rushed forward, drawing his sword cleanly across the body of his father’s killer and opening him from end to end. As he fell to his knees and his fingers fumbled disbelievingly through what remained of their father’s head, Gregor laughed.

***********

_“Sanctus ignis!”_ A burst of flame shot from Sansa’s mace at the incantation, and struck the bandit that charged toward her, scattering him to the wind.

Arya and Jaqen fought side by side, each with deadly precision. They cut through the brigands as they clambered over the walls, but many more remained, and the corpses of the townsfolk far outweighed those of Vvulf’s army.

Jaqen’s blade sliced a man’s head clean off as he struggled to reload his pistol, and Arya threw a stinging powder into another’s eyes before burying a knife deep in his heart.

The screams of the dying were haunting and though they wished to cover their ears against the horrible sound, they fought on.

One of Arya’s daggers hit a man squarely between the shoulder blades, and the sobbing woman beneath his corpse dragged herself away, her dress high around her waist and soaked with blood.

A frenetic delight danced in Jaqen’s eyes as he twirled about between the brigands, and for the first time, Arya could see the mad jester who lived beneath her lover’s mask. His blade dripped red as he slaughtered those who stood before him and the cackle that left his lips as it found another man’s throat made even Arya’s blood run cold.

Though Sansa continued to fight, her eyes had glazed over once more and her gaze found the bodies of those who she had once known, full of pity and regret.

One of Vvulf’s men shot in their direction, but missed, and as he moved to reload his gun, Arya ran to her sister’s side, gripping her shoulders and shaking her.

“Sansa!” Her blue eyes stared blankly in fear and Arya raised a hand to slap her. When her palm met Sansa’s cheek with a sharp crack, she earned a look of surprise, but clarity, at last. “I need you with me,” Arya said fiercely. “I won’t have you die today.”

As she turned back and prepared a dagger for the nearby fusilier, his musket fired once more, hastily and clumsily, and Arya watched in horror as it hit its mark. 

Jaqen’s blade stuck with a sickening squelch and remained firmly lodged in the neck of the brigand before him as the jester staggered backward, a red stain blooming across his back. The ringing in his ears from the shot drowned out the sound of Arya’s tortured scream, and she caught him as he fell. Behind her, Sansa’s mace crushed the marksman’s skull with a brutal crack.

Frantically, Arya’s hands fluttered across Jaqen’s back, ineffectively trying to stop the bleeding. “Sansa,” she begged. “Sansa make it stop. Please, God, make it stop!”

The vestal knelt at his side and gripped the holy symbol about her neck, her knuckles white as she murmured the words of healing that she knew. Though his labored breathing grew slightly more even, her magic could not staunch the flow and when Sansa stumbled away, Arya remained, her tears falling on his pale, cold skin.

***********

At his back, Gregor had a heavy barrel of crude but effective explosives, and as he tossed them carelessly about the hamlet, the flames between the buildings grew higher, casting a ruddy glow across the broken bodies that littered the streets.

“He was our _father!_” Sandor yelled, rising to his feet once more. Tears of rage and grief blurred his vision.

Gregor snorted, his eyes hungrily following the desperate scrambling of a dying vestal. “He was a coward. But perhaps I should have had him watch you die. You always were his favorite son.”

He shrugged his massive shoulders and ordered the men around the cannon to move the colossal war machine. “No matter. You will die today, little brother. I hope you have no regrets.”

With a wave of his hand, he sent his men to do his bidding, and as he stalked away through the hamlet’s burning streets, Sandor fought for his life. He did have regrets; far too many. And today would not be the day he died.

***********

“Where are your sisters?” Catelyn fretted in the hall, her eyes filled with fear. Robb simply shook his head, and his mother began to cry.

At the front window, Eddard stood and looked out at the destruction of his home, his expression one of resignation. Many years ago, he had sealed his fate, and now it had finally come to meet him.

“We should be out fighting,” Rickon said angrily, axe in hand.

“Sandor told us to stay inside,” Bran responded quietly, his eyes on the flames outside.

Ned nodded in agreement, but Rickon did not look convinced, nor did Robb. He feared for Arya and Sansa, and though he knew they were able fighters, they were not prepared for an attack like this. None of them were.

A sudden thunderous crack sent the front door splintering to pieces, and though the breach was met with cries of fear and dismay, Eddard did not flinch. He should have listened to them, gathered around the campfire with the prophet’s gibbering still ringing in their ears. He should have known.

A few men began to scramble over the fractured barricades into the hall, and behind them, their leader followed. When he stood in the doorway, Ned finally moved, his gaze finding the brigand Vvulf. The eyes that stared back were full of hatred and rage, and he was not surprised to find that he knew them.

“Leave them,” he said quietly, moving to stand before Gregor. “It’s me you want.”

Gregor laughed at his words. Though it had been many years since their initial victory over the wicked sorcerer, the crusader still thought himself a hero. “You think I will spare them? You’re as much a fool as you always have been, Eddard Stark. Your god will not save you now.”

With almost absent ease, the sword in his hand swung out, and Catelyn screamed as her husband’s head was cut cleanly from his shoulders. Gregor’s laughter echoed over the sound of her sobs, and his grin was feral as he lifted his grisly trophy from the floor and turned to go.

“Kill them all. And make them suffer.”

***********

When Arya found her feet again, her eyes were dark with rage and she left Jaqen’s body behind, seeking out any brigands that remained. Her blades flashed with nearly inhuman speed, and not a man that crossed her path lived to see another day.

Shaken and frightened, Sansa staggered away, her vision obscured by the smoke that choked the alleyways. Her hands trembled and one remained tightly around the cross that hung from her neck. She had trained most of her life in the healing arts, but in the end, she had been unable to save him. She was powerless, and nothing she could do would save any of them.

A roar of bloodlust and fury echoed from the streets below the abbey, and Sansa’s heart leapt to her throat. Sandor; he was still alive.

Her grip tightening about her mace, she followed the sounds of battle, and when she emerged from the smoke and ash, a terrible laugh met her ears.

“Sansa, no!” Sandor cried out when he saw her and effortlessly countered the blow aimed at his head. Empowered by her presence, and his fear for her life, he cut through the remaining brigands, and stood panting with his sword in hand as Gregor found him once more.

A trail of blood followed his massive footsteps, and Sandor’s stomach churned as he caught sight of what he held in his fist. With a manic grin, the giant tossed the head at Sansa’s feet, and her eyes found her father’s lifeless gaze with utter horror.

A broken sob was torn from her throat as she fell to her knees and her shaking hands found her father’s face. An inhuman wail left her as she rocked it in her lap and as Sandor watched, Gregor took what he held in the other hand and lit it.

“I’m glad you’re still alive to see this.” The words were directed at Sandor, but he threw the makeshift bomb towards the prone young woman.

Without a moment of hesitation, Sandor threw himself at her, and just as he shoved her out of the way, it blew apart, throwing shrapnel and flame.

Sansa’s head struck a rock as she fell and her body grew limp, Eddard’s head rolling from her grasp to stare at the sky above. For a brief second, Sandor feared that he had killed her, and then his mind grew blank with pain. The shrapnel had imbedded itself deeply along his left side, from his shoulder to his thigh, but his face had caught the fire that spewed from the iron casing. His trembling fingers crawled along his cheek and found nothing but ruin.

As he struggled to breathe in the face of his overwhelming pain, Gregor loomed over him, a sneer twisting his cruel features. “Still pining over the mayor’s daughter then?” He laughed darkly and then spat in his brother’s face. “You’re pathetic.”

Though every inch of his body screamed in pain and he was fighting to remain conscious, Sandor’s hand crept toward his sword where it lay in the dirt. Above him, Gregor continued, his gaze locked on Sansa’s crumpled body.

“Just because you still care for her, I’ll let you watch as I make her virgin cunt bleed and then slit her throat. Your little bird won’t be singing anymore once I’m through with her.”

With a cry of pain and rage, Sandor staggered to his feet, sword in hand, and Gregor’s surprise, however brief, gave him the advantage he needed. Wrath and adrenaline giving him his strength once more, he swung his heavy blade downward with a mighty thrust, cleaving him in twain. It was only as his brother’s corpse crashed to the earth that his sword tumbled from his hand and he fell to the ground once more, another body to line the streets.

As it continued to burn, the blood of the hamlet soaked the soil, feeding the evil that rose within.


	6. Victorious, but at What Cost?

Despite the destruction that had been wrought upon it, God had not abandoned the hamlet. As the fires burned and the streets ran red, a steady rain began to fall, turning the flames to smoke and washing the blood from the cobblestones. Though small, it was a blessing nonetheless.

When their leader fell, the remaining brigands fled, and the hamlet was left to mourn.

Arya walked alone in the aftermath, looking down at the faces of those who had been killed. Jeyne was hardly recognizable, save for the dress which she had worn to the ceremony. Once a pale lavender, it had turned black with blood and ash.

Alvor Clegane was similarly disfigured by the brigands’ weapons, and Arya found Tywin at his side, whining quietly as his tongue lapped at his master’s hand. Carefully, she lifted the hound in her arms and his whimpering ceased as she rubbed absently behind his ears.

She avoided the street that ran between the village shop and the smithy, for she knew that Jaqen’s body would still be there, and she could not bear to accept that she would never be with him again.

Instead, her feet took her to the home where she had grown up, and what she found there only made her nightmare grow darker.

Catelyn’s throat had been slit, and her body lay in front of Bran’s. Ever a loving mother, she had spent her final moments trying to protect him. Robb’s chest was littered with bullets, but a fair amount of Vvulf’s men had found their end by his sword before he fell, their corpses among those of her family. And Rickon, little Rickon, barely past his twentieth nameday, had a sword still buried in his stomach. His hands were cut as though he had tried to pull it out before losing his strength.

Face wet with tears and rain, Arya stood in the middle of them all, and with her eyes turned to the heavens, she vowed that by her hand, their deaths would be avenged.

**************

Sansa’s head was still ringing when she regained consciousness, and she looked about in confusion. When her vision cleared, her memories returned to her, and she shut her eyes against the sight before her.

She had been unable to save them: Jeyne, and Jaqen, and now her father. Tears leaked from beneath her lashes and she struggled to stand. A few feet away, she saw a familiar body, and her mouth grew sour as bile rose in her throat.

“No…no.”

Sandor’s once handsome features had been burned away by the bomb that Gregor had meant for her, and the skin that remained was leathery and pock-marked. At his jaw, a hint of bone was visible, and the shrapnel had shredded his armor in several places, imbedding itself deeply in the flesh beneath.

_“Curare.”_ She placed her hand on his ruined cheek and tried to conjure the magic that she had been taught.

“Please,” she begged. “Please, Lord, let him live.”

When she saw no signs of healing, she broke into hideous sobs, curling against his body. If only she too had died, then she would not be forced to live with such terrible pain.

After a long moment, she felt a hand move against her back, and then a rough but familiar voice.

“Little bird…”

Crying anew, she flung her arms around him and clung to him tightly as she wept. She did not yet understand what she had lost in truth, so for the moment, she was relieved.

Sandor’s breathing was ragged and she could see that he was still in a great deal of pain, but he was alive. Somehow, by the grace of God, he was alive.

**************

Sandor spent nearly a week after the battle in and out of consciousness, his feverish memories blending with the horrors that danced behind his eyelids, and when his fever finally broke, he found himself in the sanitarium, Caunter Poole at his side.

Though Jeyne’s mother was a kind woman and had taught Sansa all she knew, she was one of the vestals who had failed to save his own mother’s life, and so he shied away. Still unused to his injuries, the movement tore at the feeble stitching on his side and the bandages about his torso bloomed red once again.

“Where’s Sansa?”

The older vestal was quiet for a long moment before speaking. “Those who survived have named her mayor, despite her mourning. I did not think it wise to allow her to work with so much already on her mind.”

Sandor sighed heavily. He could still hear the sound of her tortured cries as she bent over her father’s severed head. “We will all grieve Eddard’s death. He was a good mayor, and a better man.”

Caunter’s gaze shifted away from him at that and he felt his heart tighten in his chest. “Who else?” He asked hoarsely. “Who’s left? Catelyn? Bran? Robb? Rickon?”

She did not respond, and when she made no move to break her silence, Sandor snapped at her harshly. “Tell me, woman!”

“Only Arya,” the vestal whispered as tears flowed down her cheeks. “The others were all slaughtered by your brother’s men.”

Sandor’s hands clenched at his sides and he closed to eyes to try to keep the terrible images at bay. He had ordered them all to their homes. He had kept them from fighting. And in doing so, he had sentenced them to their deaths.

Where once the guilt of a single death had weighed heavy upon his shoulders, a hundred more fell to join Elinor’s memory, and unable to stop himself, he began to cry.

**************

In a time long past, Vayon Poole had struck down terrible undead creatures and demon-possessed monstrosities. He had stared into the face of evil itself and returned unscathed.

But as he looked down at the corpse that was once his daughter, he knew that he would never sleep without nightmares again. Caunter had buried herself in her work to try and keep the horrors from her mind and so at night he returned to an empty bed in an empty home, where Jeyne would never laugh or smile again.

He gathered what remained of her body in his arms, and her dress along with it. She had spent days sewing it by hand at Sansa’s side and had been so proud of her handiwork. When she had finally put it on the morning of the wedding, she had looked so beautiful, just like her mother.

Little had she known that she had been sewing the same dress that she would be buried in.

**************

When Sansa appeared in the doorway of the Stark home, Arya finally allowed herself to cry. They held each other as they mourned, turning their faces as the Caretaker took away the bodies of their family and lined them next to the others in the abbey.

For several nights they slept in the same bed as they had once done as children, too afraid to be alone. Arya was the first to distance herself again, spending a great deal of her time near the cove. There, she was not forced to relive the memories that only brought her pain.

While Arya ran from what had happened, Sansa forced herself to confront it. Rather than denying herself her grief, she faced it. Slowly, she wandered through her childhood home, cleaning up the debris and rubble from the battle. 

She kept herself from the sanitarium in the days that followed, in part to respect Caunter’s orders, but mostly out of fear. Still numb with shock and grief, she had dragged Sandor to the healers, but now that her mind had cleared, she was afraid to see what had become of him. 

The day that she was named mayor, she stood in the main hall of the former Stark home, gazing upon the portraits of her family. With a heavy heart, she removed all but those of her mother and father. Eddard’s portrait she kept to honor the position that he had held before her, and Catelyn’s so that she could find strength in her mother’s gaze.

As she looked a final time at the portraits of her brothers, she turned from her home at last to face the ones she loved who still remained.

**************

Sandor was asleep when she arrived, and with a hollow smile, Caunter took her leave, allowing Sansa to sit at his side. Even in slumber he was not at peace and his brow furrowed deeply as his fingers twitched restlessly at his sides.

He had been well looked after by the vestals of the sanitarium, but no magic nor herbal remedy could heal the burns across his face. They still wept openly, and in the light of day she could see the ruined remains of his ear and the portion of his long dark hair that would never grow back.

His bare chest was heavily bandaged, as was his left thigh, and though they had removed what shrapnel they could, there was still great fear of infection, and so each time they changed his bandages they applied a thick poultice, hoping to draw out any poison that might have found its way within.

She was still looking sadly at the terrible wounds that had been inflicted upon him when his eyes fluttered open and as they focused on her face, he relaxed slightly.

“You’re here.”

Trying to keep herself from tears, Sansa nodded. “Of course.”

A heavy silence fell between them and to busy herself Sansa began to remove his bandages. The routine of her work at least would keep her from losing control of her emotions.

After watching her for a long moment, Sandor finally spoke again, quietly. “I’m sorry, little bird. This was all my fault.”

She lifted her head sharply at that and met the shame in his gaze with disbelief. “No it wasn’t,” she insisted. “You had no hand in what happened.”

“But it was my responsibility to protect the hamlet,” he urged stubbornly. “Your father entrusted me with that and I gave him my word that we would be prepared. I promised him that our home would never fall again. Now they’re all dead, and we’ll be next.”

Sansa stayed quiet for a long time before she replied. “Do you truly wish to die with no hope?” she asked sadly, removing the last of his bandages.

He snorted and then winced when his sneer pulled at the burnt corner of his mouth. “Hope? There’s no good left in this world, Sansa, so there’s no use in hope anymore. Vvulf or no, the brigands will return, and we have no fight left in us. It seems we’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of those who came before us, and this time, there’s no one to save us but ourselves.”

“No good left?” Sansa echoed softly. “None at all?” Her blue eyes were wet with tears and Sandor’s expression softened slightly. After nearly long enough for her to turn away again, he brought a hand to lightly brush against her cheek.

“You’ve always been so good,” he murmured, her skin soft beneath his calloused thumb. “So sweet and so pure.”

“And you’ve always tried to change me,” she whispered, tears spilling from her eyes and falling on his skin. “You’ve never wanted me the way I am.”

Sandor shook his head and slid his hand around to cradle the nape of her neck. The movement was hesitant, but she did not shy away. Their eyes met, and there was something in them that they had long been afraid to show. “I never wanted you to be hurt the way you are now,” he explained. “I just wanted you to understand that nothing is as good as you wish it were. As good as you are.”

She met his gaze for a long moment, tears welling in her eyes again at the burns that ravaged his once handsome face. Gregor’s abuse had twisted him from a curious boy to a jaded man, and though she feared what effect this most recent horror might work upon him, she knew that she still loved him, and that she always would.

In the darkened quarters of the sanitarium, amidst the wounded and the dying, she bent her face toward his. As she did, he turned his head and her lips met the ruined flesh of his cheek. Though she was hurt, she did not recoil, but left a lingering kiss behind.

When she pulled back again, Sandor looked angry, and his hand fell back to his side.

“I won’t have you mistaking pity for whatever it is that you think you’re feeling, little bird. Now that I look as hideous as I always have been, there’s no use in pretending it’s anything else.” Though his heart was aching in his chest, the guilt and shame of a hundred deaths held it tightly in their grip. 

Sansa’s eyes flashed with anger at that and she snapped back at him. “And I won’t have you telling me what I’m feeling, Sandor. You’ve never been hideous to me, and you aren’t now. You’re so convinced that we’re simply waiting for our deaths. Why can’t I choose to be happy in the time I have left?”

“Not hideous?” he repeated in disbelief. “Look at me, Sansa.”

Frustrated, she did not obey, and she let out a cry of protest as he roughly gripped her chin and forced her gaze to the weeping burns across his face. _“Look at me, dammit!”_ he yelled, equal measure of pain and anger in his eyes. “Look at me and try to tell me that you see anything else but a monster.”

Furious, Sansa held his gaze unflinchingly and her voice cracked like a whip when she spoke. “You want to know what I see what I look at you, Sandor Clegane? I see the strongest and bravest man I’ve ever known. I see the man that I’ve spent my whole life falling in love with. _That’s_ what I see when I look at you.”

His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to respond, but she silenced him with a kiss, and this time, he did not pull away. Tentatively, he returned it, and when her tongue swept across his ruined lower lip, feelings he had long since suppressed as a boy returned with a vengeance. Desperate to convince himself that she was real, he gripped her face tightly in his hands, molding her mouth to his despite the pain.

She pulled back only enough to speak before meeting his lips again. “I love you, Sandor. I love you.”

“I love you too, Sansa,” he murmured. As his thoughts turned swiftly from innocent caresses, he forced himself away, resting his forehead against hers. “It shouldn’t have taken me almost losing you to admit it. How much of our life together have we lost by being spending so many years as a pair of bloody fools?”

Sansa shook her head, shushing him softly. “It’s of no matter. We mustn’t dwell on the past.” 

Drowning in the intensity of Sandor’s gaze, she did not see Arya standing in the shadowed doorway, her eyes on the couple, still entwined in their intimate embrace.

“If we do, it will only bring us to ruin.”


	7. Valiant Sacrifice

Nearly a fortnight had passed before the townsfolk were able to bury their loved ones. Though many of them urged their new mayor to hold the burial mere days after the attack, she resisted, claiming that the burial they deserved could not be rushed. In truth, she was waiting for Sandor to regain his strength, for he wished to bury his father.

In the time that Sansa stalled, she set to embracing her new duties at the hamlet’s leader. Under her command, repairs began, and the blood that remained was scrubbed away from all but their minds.

As her sister rebuilt, Arya surveyed the work of the Caretaker, pacing amongst the stiffening bodies as the men carved coffins and began to dig their graves.

When the day finally came the survivors gathered in the graveyard, and beneath a darkened sky, they laid friends, family, and lovers to rest. Where Sansa watched her loved ones lowered into the earth with tear-filled eyes, Arya stood with jaw and fists clenched.

As the last coffin was lowered they looked to Sansa, and with a heavy heart, she began to speak.

“What happened to our home was a horror that most of us could not imagine, and we will remember our loss for as long as we continue to live. But we must not let our hearts stay heavy with grief and anger. If we are to survive, we must look toward the future, and rebuild our lives together.”

At her side, Sandor squeezed her shoulder gently and she cast him a sad smile.

Many of the townsfolk nodded at her words, but far at the back, unseen and unnoticed, Arya slipped away. She was not there to hear the speeches to honor her father, nor would she have cared to. Words were nothing but empty air, and they could not bring her family back to her. Few things had the power that could.

**************

The Vvulf’s attack proved to be far more successful than Qyburn had even hoped to believe. He could hear the screams of terror and feel the heat of the flames where he hid far beneath the earth, and they brought him tremendous satisfaction, nearly orgasmic in its intensity.

Once he had learned of the great power that was his inheritance, a dark anger had begun to fester within him. For so long he had been denied his birthright, first by his mother, then his father, but always in truth by the crusader, Eddard Stark.

If his father had been able to complete his work, his name would have been known all throughout the lands, and his mother would not have felt such shame for carrying his child. Instead, he had been murdered by Eddard Stark, his creatures all destroyed by the heroes that followed him. He had been cursed to die before he achieved the full extent of his powers, and in the end, they tried to erase the memory of his evil from the hamlet rather than embrace it as the genius that it was.

Foolishly, his father’s killer had allowed him refuge within his town’s walls, and there Qyburn had finally earned what he deserved. The power that surged through his veins as the portal opened once more was like nothing he could ever have imagined, and it drove him to seek his revenge.

In the end, it had been wrought by the hands of the Vvulf and his brigands, and Qyburn’s name was nowhere to be heard. A part of him longed for the hamlet to know who it was that had brought ruin upon them, but he was far too clever to invoke their wrath. Not when there was still so much work to do. 

Instead, Vvulf had taken the fall, bent on his own revenge, and his death would bring the hamlet some sense of peace as they tried to rebuild their lives. When they believed they were safe once more, he would continue the work that his father had started, and have his final vengeance in the end.

The man-at-arms who had once fought the former mayor still lived, though broken by the death of his daughter. He would die in time, and with him, the others that remained. Ned Stark’s head had left his body, but Sansa was stronger than Qyburn had anticipated, even more so after Vvulf had broken his vow to send Sandor Clegane to his grave.

The sorcerer knew that soon they would be unable to resist the relief that came with pleasures of the flesh, and when that time came, he could begin his work. In their distraction, they would have little time to watch the movements of the one he was keeping a close eye on.

He could see that Arya Stark’s thoughts were already black with thoughts of revenge and he knew that given enough time, she would seek the power that he held within him. 

Until then, he would continue to watch. And he would wait.

**************

“Tywin, heel.”

The hound limped obediently to his new master’s side and Sandor rubbed his ears as he hobbled along with. Sansa lent her shoulders as support, and with her help he was finally able to get around. It was slow and painful, but better than wasting away on one of the sanitarium cots.

“I don’t want to go back there,” he said irritably. His thoughts were still heavy in light of the recent burials. “It’s dark and it smells like death and that disgusting mess that you keep slathering all over me.”

“That disgusting mess may yet save your life,” Sansa replied patiently, though she did not disagree with him. The sanitarium, though effective, was a dismal place, and the cries of pain throughout all hours of the night were enough to drive any man to insanity.

“But perhaps Caunter would be willing to release you.”

Sandor snorted at that. “I doubt it. She still says I need constant supervision. Seems to think if I’m left alone for more than the time it takes me to piss I’ll tear out all my stitches.” Sansa shot him a pointed look and he colored slightly before grumbling under his breath. “It only happened once.”

“Let me speak with her,” Sansa replied, gently helping him to lean against the exterior of the building. “I’ll be back in just a moment.” She knelt at Tywin’s side and gave him a pat. “You keep him in line.” The hound barked in response, tail wagging at the display of affection.

With a heavy sigh, Sandor dropped his head back against the wall and scratched absently at the bandage on his side before he caught himself. Though he was glad that he had finally admitted his feelings for Sansa, he was quickly growing frustrated. A veritable hurricane of long stifled emotions had swirled to existence once more, and though he greatly enjoyed the kisses and soft touches that she was willing to give, his body was aching for far more. He would not rush her, but the stress of recent events still weighed heavy on his mind and even just imagining his little bird soft and naked beneath him was a slight balm to their sting.

When he heard her footsteps approaching once more he tried desperately to turn his thoughts from their track and awkwardly shifted his legs.

“Am I damned to stay here for the rest of my miserable life?” he jested when she reappeared, and she took in his flushed skin and darkened eyes with slight suspicion before replying.

“No. But you won’t be going home.”

“Where am I to stay then, little bird?”

She hesitated for a moment before replying. “With me.”

**************

“Is this suitable?” Sansa asked quietly. Her parents’ room was just as they had left it, and it hurt her greatly to stand within.

Sandor looked about before nodding. “It’s fine, little bird.”

She returned the gesture, and as she turned to go, he stopped her. “I don’t have to stay with you, Sansa. My home is still standing, and I have Tywin to keep me company.”

Though her eyes were wet with tears, Sansa shook her head. “I want you here. I cannot avoid their memories forever.”

Gazing at her with equal measure of sympathy and love, he drew her towards him and kissed her softly. She responded in kind, and after a moment, splayed a hand across his back to pull him closer. Suppressing a groan, he nudged her to rest against the wall, his mouth finding her pale throat and drawing a sigh from her lips.

Far from discouraging his touch, she tangled her fingers in his hair, holding him in place. Her nerves were frayed and despite her insistence that they look toward the future, her grief was keeping her tethered to the past. She spent many nights crying herself to sleep as the images of her family flickered behind her eyelids, and in those times it was only thoughts of Sandor that kept her sane.

Some of the townsfolk had turned to flagellation in an attempt to ease their guilt and pain, others to meditation, or to drink, or to the thrill of the card tables. Sansa found some relief in prayer, but sometimes she wondered if other more worldly remedies would prove a better salve to her battered soul.

Sandor’s hands wandered hesitantly past the curve of her hips and Sansa reveled in the fog of desire that clouded her mind. Perhaps, for a time, she could simply forget what they had endured, and lose herself in his touch.

When her eyes fluttered open to take him in, the view of the room before her swiftly reminded her of what she had lost, and a sob rose unbidden in her throat. Hastily, Sandor pushed himself away from her, eyes filled with fear.

“Did I hurt you?”

When she shook her head and broke into tears, he gathered her in his arms, and for a long time, she cried. Rather than smile over thoughts of the hamlet in spring once more, and of the flowers that would grow from her mother’s grave, she cried over the way their bodies had been broken. She cried remembering the flames and the blood.

The pain of their loss would remain fresh in the minds of the hamlet’s few survivors for many years to come, and though with time most of them learned to forgive, none of them would ever forget.

**************

Though the Stark home was on the outer edge of the hamlet, the screams of those still dying and the tears of the grieving townsfolk could be heard from within its walls.

Arya tossed and turned in her bed, trying to shut out the terrible sounds. She remembered a time when instead she had drifted to sleep to the sound of Jaqen’s steady breathing. Now, instead of in her bed, he lay deep beneath the ground.

Sitting up, she pushed her hair back from her forehead and took a shaky breath before rising to her feet. In what had once been Eddard and Catelyn’s room, Sandor slept restlessly, and his troubled murmuring only put her further on edge.

Silently, she fastened her daggers to the leather band about her chest and laced up her boots. She knew Sansa would worry when she wasn’t there in the morning, but she could not stand to stay another second in the place where her family had been murdered. Sandor had confessed that Gregor had talked of payment before his death, and she could not shake the thought from her mind. Someone had ordered her family’s deaths, and for that she would end their life.

Hesitating at the front door, she turned away and her feet took her down a long hall instead, to the room where various mementos and trophies of her parents’ past had long been stored. The heart of the sorcerer that her father had killed still remained, black and cold where it sat in a small glass case. Catelyn had abhorred having it beneath her roof, but Eddard insisted that it remain: a grisly testament to what they had endured.

Quietly, Arya moved to the wardrobe in the corner, and when its doors creaked open, she saw what she had been seeking. A dark tattered coat hung within, and hidden in the shadows beneath it, a pointed hat, now moth-eaten and dull.

Arya took them from inside and with trembling hands she donned them. Lyanna had been a reckless woman, and in the end, it had led to her death. She had, however, faced great evil and avenged the hamlet with her wild fury.

As she took her leave, the coat twirled about her, and as she disappeared once more into waters of the cove, she faded into the blackness within, only the flash of her teeth visible beneath the brim of the pointed cap.


	8. Twisted and About to Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's sex in this one. It's not very graphic, but if you don't like it, don't read it.

For Sandor, not even slumber was an escape from the nightmare that their lives had become. Flames danced behind his eyelids as he slept, and despite his gradual recovery, the pain he felt in his dreams was fresh and brutal.

Often, his nightly thrashing reopened his wounds and made the healing process much more difficult. Sansa, for her part, patiently closed them again as she always had and changed his bandages without any comment about the way he spent his troubled nights.

The dreams, however, only got worse as time went on. His tortured mind imagined what would have been if Gregor had acted on his word and forced him to watch as Sansa was raped and murdered, powerless against his uncontrollable rage. Her broken body haunted his dreams, and when he woke, he ached to see her before him, whole and healthy.

In her own bed, Sansa sat awake, listening to the sounds of Sandor’s restless sleep and praying to God that He would grant him peace. She wished to go to him as he thrashed about in the snare of his nightmares, but always stopped herself, afraid to see him so vulnerable when she was still so broken herself. Instead, she went to him in the morning and soothed him with kisses and comforting words, trying to ignore the haunted look in his red-rimmed eyes.

One night as he dreamt again of her death, he was awakened to find her kneeling above him and shaking him from his sleep. From the expression of panic on her face, he could guess that his tortured screams of her name had escaped from the confines of his subconscious.

She was there. She was alive. She was safe, and she loved him.

“I’m here,” she murmured in echo of his thoughts, pressing her lips to his sweat-soaked brow. “You’re safe. It was only a dream.”

As he blinked the tears from his eyes he truly saw her for the first time, and any lingering terror from his nightmare swiftly vanished and was replaced with equal measure of arousal and shame. In her hurry to his side she had neglected to don a cloak over her thin nightshift and he could see all too much of her through the sheer fabric.

His gaze slid slowly from her face to the dark outline of her nipples pebbled against the light cloth and further, to the simple smallclothes that hid her fully from his view.

She noticed his attention shift, and though she blushed, she did not move to cover herself, instead leaning in to kiss him. The feel of her soft, full breasts against his bare chest sent all the blood from his scattered mind and he swore softly against her plump lips.

When she pulled back her hair fell about her shoulders, framing her pale face and drawing attention to the sudden darkness of her wide blue eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered quietly.

“I love you too, little bird,” he rumbled in reply.

After a long moment, she spoke again, hesitantly. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore, Sandor.”

“Feel like what?” All he was feeling at the moment was her soft body still pressed against his and he would be happy to feel it forever. 

“Like we’re just waiting to die,” she replied softly, sadly. “I want to feel alive again.”

Her gaze held his evenly and he swallowed thickly. Though he wanted to believe that he knew what she meant, he reminded himself that she was still in mourning. If her decisions were based solely on the fact that she had recently been forced to watch her family be buried, then he would not take advantage of her. If he did, he would be no better than his brother, and he would never fall so low as that.

“I know you’re hurting, Sansa,” he responded warily. Before he could continue, she nodded in agreement, but did not look deterred.

“We both are. Doesn’t that mean we deserve some happiness?” When he hesitated, she kissed him again. “We’ve spent our entire lives denying what we’ve felt for each other,” she whispered against his lips. “Don’t we deserve to truly be together, now more than ever? I want to be yours, Sandor. In every way.”

She lifted her gaze to his, and he was helpless beneath the plea in her eyes.

“God, I wish our lives could be different.”

Sansa smiled sadly at that, but leaned down and gave him a lingering kiss. “Every night I thank God that you’re still in mine, no matter what else has come of it.”

Tired of drowning in the misery that had befallen them, Sandor returned her kiss fervently, tugging her bottom lip between his teeth and reveling in her quiet gasp. As her tongue slipped shyly between his parted lips, he moved to roll her over, but his shoulder flared with pain at the movement and he let out a string of curses.

Silently, Sansa kissed the bandage that stretched across it before laying her palm flat against his chest and forcing him onto his back once more. Her gaze steadily meeting his, she moved to sit atop his lap, and Sandor’s mouth went dry as he took in the sight of her above him.

“Are you sure, little bird?” he murmured, hoping desperately that she would say yes.

She experimentally rolled her hips by way of reply and a flood of familiar and long self-inflicted sensations welled up inside of him as his head lolled back in pleasure. “Fuck…”

Desperate to chase the feeling that had settled firmly between her thighs, Sansa rocked against him, kissing him soundly as she did. She had dreamt for so long of pressing her lips against his, and now, though they would never heal, she savored the duality of their kisses, one side rough and ruined and the other soft and smooth as she had always imagined.

Instinctively, his massive hands sought out the curve of her ass beneath her smallclothes and pressed her against his aching erection. They moaned in unison at the much needed friction and quickly growing impatient with the barriers still between them, Sandor tugged at the bottom of her shift.

He fumbled awkwardly for a moment with his still bandaged hand before Sansa helped him, sitting up and pulling the thin nightgown off over her head. His breath hissed out from between clenched teeth as his eyes found her full, firm breasts.

“Fuck me, little bird,” he breathed in disbelief. “You’re perfect.”

One of her eyebrows cocked slightly and the laugh that rumbled in his chest was cut short when her fingers found the laces of his trousers. Though they were loose, removing them proved difficult around the bandages that covered his many injuries and he found himself biting the inside of his cheek to keep from wincing in pain.

When Sansa met his gaze again, his pain was forgotten. Eyes dark, she unabashedly took in his naked form beneath her and her teeth absently caught her bottom lip as she let out a shaky breath.

“I need this, Sandor,” she whispered. “I need _you_. Make love to me.”

Even if he had possessed any willpower where Sansa was concerned, he was desperate to do whatever he could to fill the void that had been torn from her and so he obeyed, like the hound that he was. Her smallclothes joined his on the floor and he showed her how it felt to be truly alive, his tongue lapping steadily between her thighs as she squirmed beneath him.

Head thrown back, entire body flushed, she gripped his head in her hands, her legs spread wide to accommodate his broad shoulders. He drowned in her scent as she cried out in pleasure, one hand wrapped around her pale thigh to keep her anchored to the uneven touch of his lips.

The sound of his name torn from her throat as she spasmed uncontrollably in his bed was the most beautiful noise he had ever heard, and he scoffed at the thought of the men who had once fallen to the song of the wicked siren. His little bird’s song was far more entrancing, and he was thoroughly and completely under her spell.

When he could wait no longer, he did as she had asked of him, making her whole again as he found his place deep inside her. Her legs wound around his strong shoulders as he sank into her welcoming heat and as they moved together, they forgot about all else but each other.

His teeth found her neck as her nails dug gouges in his flesh and the room filled with a chorus of moans and sighs as their sweat-slicked skin glistened in the dwindling candlelight.

Though their decision had been made with motives of love, there was no small amount of desperation behind their actions. They were left spent and gasping for air in the aftermath, and though Sandor’s injuries screamed from the strain and an ache settled between Sansa’s thighs at the foreign intrusion, they found each other again without hesitation, hands anchoring to each other’s bodies as if to confirm that they were not simply living in a feverish fantasy.

After that night, Sansa no longer slept in her own chambers, and as Sandor slipped into blissful unconsciousness each night with Sansa tangled in his arms, he did not dream.

**************

While her sister lost herself in the distractions of carnal indulgence, Arya returned to the place where she had first fought at Jaqen’s side. Their blades had flashed in unison and the blood of the beasts they slew had splashed across the stones and painted his mask a garish red.

High on victory and violence, they too had succumbed to their base desires. She could still remember how it felt to be touched by his cold and experienced hands. When she closed her eyes she could still see him beneath her, his typically enigmatic features flushed and contorted in pleasure.

When she slept however, it was his body that she saw in her mind, cold and lifeless in her grip. Sansa talked of moving on with their lives, but what was simple for her in the arms of her lover was impossible for Arya, her heart heavy with grief and pain.

With Lyanna’s tattered coat pulled tightly about her frame, she sank to the floor, running her hands through the soot that still marked where they had once made camp. Now, there was no heat, only a cold emptiness that made her ache more terribly for that which she had lost.

She cried herself to sleep that night, and as her battered mind conjured up terrible images of death and destruction, they came to life far beneath her. In the depths of the ruins, where the malicious portal spewed forth its evil, a twisted creation was brought from deep within it, stronger than it had been in its former life and far more terrible.

With a roar, the horrific Swine God was released within the ruins, and Qyburn began his work.


	9. The Evils that Lurketh

Several months passed after Gregor’s attack on the hamlet and though physical injuries began to heal those that had been sustained in the villagers’ hearts were slow to fade.

As her sister found herself again in the arms of the man she loved, Arya only lost herself further with each day that passed. She spent her days pacing the halls of the manor, staring at the spaces on the wall where the portraits of her brothers had once hung proudly, and her nights within the halls of the warrens and the forests of the weald, wandering deeper each time.

She did not envy Sansa’s happiness, but did regard it with bitterness. Sansa believed that their family would have wanted her and Sandor to be happy, but Arya knew what it was that they truly deserved. And she intended to get it, no matter the cost.

**************

“I worry about the others,” Sansa said quietly one night as she lie wrapped in her lover’s embrace. “They’ve all lost so much.” She had passed Vayon Poole in the graveyard earlier and his vacant, misty stare had broken her heart.

“We all have,” Sandor murmured in reply, his eyes opening sleepily before closing again.

Sansa sighed and rested her head against his chest, absently playing with the fraying edge of one of his bandages. Though there were far fewer now, his healing was still a gradual process, and in the end, he would be left with many scars, not the least of which marred his face.

“I wish there was something I could do to lift their spirits. I feel selfish for being so happy with you while others who are still mourning have nothing to bring them hope.”

Sandor was silent for a long time and Sansa had just begun to think that he had fallen asleep when he spoke again.

“Perhaps there is something we can do.” His thumb stroked idly at the curve of her waist and he paused for another long moment before continuing. “Marry me, Sansa.”

Her eyes widened in surprise at his words and she propped herself onto an elbow, the blankets falling to her waist.

“What?”

Though her lover’s gaze had unfailingly sought out her newly bared breasts, he was undeterred.

“Marry me. We’re already living as though we are, and perhaps a wedding will help to lift spirits. We can’t look forward if we dwell on what became of your sister’s.”

As a thousand girlish dreams of her wedding rose to mind, Sansa blushed and looked at him shyly. “You really want to marry me?”

Sandor chuckled softly and his eyes found hers again. “Yes, you silly little bird. I want to marry you.” When her face lit up with a grin, he returned it and tugged her tighter against him. “Come here.”

Her lips found his as she slung one of her legs across his and she bit her lip when his nostrils flared and he groaned in response. Her smile remained as their touches grew increasingly purposeful, and as his name left her lips in a breathy chant, she realized that despite everything, they could recover. In time, they could leave their past behind. They could be happy.

**************

Out of respect for Arya, their wedding was a small affair. They waited a few months so as not to rush things, and when the time came, those who remained in the hamlet joined the couple at the outskirts of the weald. Beneath the full moon, in the light that filtered through the shadows of the trees, Vayon Poole gave Sansa away. As Sandor kissed her soundly and made her his wife, they looked on with joy and pride.

Arya embraced her sister, but could not match the wide grin that lit up her pretty features. No matter how much time had passed, she could not forget what had become of her love, and still she mourned, as she would until the end of time.

As the festivities began in the tavern, Arya took her leave, a terrible darkness festering inside of her. She had bided her time for far too long, wallowing in her grief and anger. It was time to act, and to get her revenge at last.

Something wicked and unknown pulled her to the crumbling mansion above the moors, and so she wandered its dismal halls, where once Jaqen had turned aside in revulsion. Her feet carried her down through the ancient excavations, deeper and deeper with every step. When the portal rose before her, hideous and awful, whatever tethered her to its power did not break, but beckoned her ever closer.

With trembling fingers, she reached toward the red mist that belched from the swirling black ichor, and before her hand could meet it, she heard a voice.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

She whirled about, daggers in hand, but her gaze held no surprise as Qyburn stepped from the shadows. She knew that his interest in the hamlet was beyond that of a historian, but did not realize what it was that he had truly done. 

“You.”

He nodded sagely, but his gaze was ravenous as he took her in. She wore the clothes that his father had once killed Lyanna in; a fitting choice, for now Arya Stark would fall at the hands of his descendent.

“What is it that you seek, my child?” Qyburn asked, and the velvety purr of his voice loosened her tongue.

“Vengeance.”

His teeth flashed and he reached out a hand, softly caressing her jaw. She tried to jerk away, but he held her fast, his fingers bruising her skin.

“You and I are not so different, Arya Stark. We have both lost family and wish to get revenge for their deaths.”

“It wasn’t Gregor who killed them,” she said, her voice dangerously quiet. “Someone else’s hand is behind the attack, and when I find them, I will drive a dagger into their heart for everyone I’ve lost. I swear on my father’s grave, they will be avenged.”

Qyburn laughed at that, though his sallow skin paled further beneath his robes. Clenching his jaw, he dropped his hand, and she stepped away from him, wary, but not afraid. “You are weak, Arya Stark.”

Her eyes flashed in fury and as her grip tightened on the knives in her fists, he continued.

“But I can make you strong.”

He turned to the portal, and just as he knew she would, she followed his gaze, and was drawn within its sway once more.

“Your father was a hero,” he said, keeping the bitterness from his tone. “But he, Poole, Clegane, Lyanna…they did not understand the sorcerer’s power. When they killed his creations, and finally tore his heart from his chest, they were banished from the realms of men, but the portal was not destroyed, only sealed. Slowly, I have been able to raise them once again, though there is still much work to be done.”

“Why?” Arya asked hollowly, her gaze focused on the swirling black sludge. “He was an evil man. My father was doing God’s work.”

“Perhaps,” Qyburn replied with a shrug. “But he was powerful.” He turned to her again, but she did not meet his eyes. “What you see before you has the power that you seek. It can give you the strength to take your vengeance.”

She was silent for a long moment before finally speaking again. “I will do whatever it takes.”

Qyburn’s grin was manic, and he gestured toward the great evil that his father had awakened so many years before. “Then take it, my child. Take what is due. Let this power make you strong.”

Her hands shook as she stared into the foul, churning blackness. Though her daggers clattered to the ground as they fell from her grip, she could not hear them over the roaring of the blood in her ears. Her fingers met the ichor and as it flowed over her skin, her body grew taut and her features contorted in pain.

Qyburn watched as it writhed across her flesh, his heart pounding in his chest. “Do not fight it,” he urged. “Embrace it. Let it in.”

A yell of agony and terror was torn from her throat as she was swallowed by the inky black sludge, and just when he thought it might pull her within, it receded.

Arya crumpled to the ground as the portal withdrew its hold on her, and though her breathing was shallow, she was alive. Slowly, Qyburn moved to stand above his young protégé.

“Rise, my child.” Sluggishly, she stirred. “Rise, and take your revenge.”

With difficult but deliberate movements, she did as she was bid. Lyanna’s coat fell from her shoulders and the pointed cap tumbled to join her discarded daggers.

As Sandor and Sansa drunkenly stumbled from the tavern to their marriage bed, the sorceress returned to the world above. Standing at the top of the hill, what was left of Arya Stark looked down at the streets where her family had been slaughtered, and her rage-filled gaze burned through eyes as black as night.


	10. Darkest Sentinels

Vayon Poole was the first to die.

Even with time, he never forgot the depth of his loss, nor the responsibility that he felt for Vvulf’s attack. But he was strong, for those he still had left needed him to be.

At Sansa’s bidding, he looked to the future, for a time.

No longer beneath her sister’s watchful eye, Arya spent more and more of her time before the portal. Qyburn helped her to understand and shape the powers that she had been given, and with time, he revealed his plan.

Possessed by the pull of the portal and motivated by her lust for vengeance, she did not see him for who he truly was, and so she obeyed his commands unfailingly, oblivious to the irony behind her devotion.

The swine god was merely the first to reform within the black ichor, and with the combination of their powers, others soon rose, just as they had in their fathers’ time. The beguiling siren returned to her worshippers in the cove, her song enticing and haunting. The drowned crew was dragged from the murky depths, cursed to serve a new set of masters. And the hag witch took to the weald once again, her experiments beginning anew in strange and horrible ways.

One day, as Arya returned to the hamlet, Vayon Poole crossed her path. Deep in the mire of her thoughts, she did not see him, nor his frightened gaze as he took in the darkness of her eyes.

He knew that she had never escaped her grief after Jaqen’s death, but the change that had come over her in the months since was far more sinister. It made him uneasy, but he would not accept the suspicions which filled his mind.

It was a night only the week after Sandor and Sansa were married that his curiosity prevailed, and in what would prove to be his final moments, he followed Arya into the weald.

Though she was concealed by the darkness within, he could hear her voice, and the cackle that answered was one that had haunted his dreams in a time long past.

With visions of cannibalism and toxic trickery seared into his mind, he fled. It was with his knees to the confessional floor and a pistol in his trembling hands that he spoke his last words.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”

**************

With the last of his father’s murderers dead, Qyburn revealed his plan to Arya. Where the former mayor had believed that the portal he unearthed was a singular and unparalleled evil, Qyburn had found evidence in the library of the crumbling mansion that there was another, darker and more sinister.

Through black and bloody rituals, they could awaken a power that none could rival, the very heart of darkness, and together, they could create a world anew, a world in which Qyburn ruled, and Arya would not be forced to live with her pain. Already her mind was slipping from her grasp and as her power grew she lost more of herself, until only her body truly remained.

Worried that the evil they sought would not take lightly to their meddling, Qyburn sent Arya out to do his bidding. Though she was a powerful ally, he could do without her, and her death, were it to occur, would only further break the hamlet apart.

They had not, however, planned on the resilience of the hamlet’s people, nor on their strength.

**************

“Vayon told me of the horrors that they fought beyond the walls. He still dreamt about them some nights, and when he woke, it was all I could do to keep him from taking his own life. It seems in the end he never truly escaped.”

Caunter Poole still wore the black of mourning, but now not only for her daughter, but her husband as well. Where their loss had made Arya selfish and irrational, and Vayon hopeless, Caunter only grew more stalwart in her faith, dutifully scrubbing what had become of her husband from the walls of the confession booth. With his blood still staining her robes, she had prayed that he would find safe passage to God’s side and be happy with Jeyne once again.

“They must be back. I do not know how, but they must be.”

Though Sandor looked doubtful, he nodded, and another of the hamlet’s elders spoke up, a haunted fog in his eyes.

“It’s true. I heard that…that song again. Out by the cove. It’s horrible and…beautiful.” He shook his head and for a moment, his vision cleared. “She’s a monster! A monster I say!” Before his tirade could continue, the haze returned, and he quieted once more.

A lengthy silence followed and in the end it was broken by Arya, far at the back. “They are back. You may doubt it still, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I still remember Father’s tales of what they fought, and I’ve seen them now: those creatures. Deep in the weald I saw the hag, tearing the flesh from her own bones and devouring it as she laughed. She was a strange creature, and mad, and far more powerful than the woman that Father once spoke of. I could feel it.”

Sansa met her sister’s gaze with fear and concern. Her eyes were dark with a gleam that she could not identify, and not for the first time she worried about what had become of Arya since the attack. She had watched over her less and less as she and Sandor grew closer, but Arya was a woman grown, and she could live her life as she saw fit. It was only as she lie awake at night while Sandor slept beside her that the worry crept back.

“They must be stopped!” someone cried, and Sansa’s gaze turned away from Arya once more.

“How?” She asked quietly. She was weary, for though she wanted to help her people, she felt powerless. They knew so little about what had happened, and the tales of the former mayor’s return were sowing panic among those who had lived during his reign.

“We need to do what your mother did,” came the reply from somewhere in the gathered crowd. “We need help.”

A resounding cry of agreement met the suggestion, and as Sansa patiently agreed to the solution, Arya slipped out once again. A deeply suppressed part of her felt guilty, but she left them behind, for she knew that this time, nothing could stop them, not even the bravest of heroes.

**************

Within a week, letters penned in Sansa’s delicate hand were traveling along the Old Road to every other town within a fortnight’s distance. They spoke of a great evil, awakened once more within the cursed hamlet. They called for help, for the hamlet did not have the strength to save itself. Just as her mother’s letter had, they begged and pleaded, and in the end, they were answered.

Heroes from abroad began to pour into the hamlet, filling the tavern. Occultists draped in blood-red robes promised to close the portal once and for all, and to harness the power that lie within. Bounty hunters followed the glimmer of gold, axes in hand and armor covering the many scars that their work had earned them. Skittish antiquarians inspected and catalogued the trinkets that had long been buried, just as Bran once had, searching for ancient secrets.

Sansa kept busy trying to inform all of the newcomers of the nature of the events which brought them to the hamlet, but the heroes did not listen. They were brash, and foolish, and with weapons in hand and hearts strong with liquor, they stormed from the hamlet, straight to their deaths.

The creatures that had been conjured from within the portal left the bodies of the heroes at the hamlet’s gates, a testament to their strength and malign intentions.

The full moon was rising once more when a final body found its way to the doorstep of what had once been the Stark manor. Where the others had been torn apart by fangs and jagged blades, this man had seen a quick end, a familiar dagger buried to its hilt within his heart.

Desperate and afraid, Sansa sat at her desk once more and penned one final letter, the parchment stained with her tears as she cried for what she had lost. With a heavy heart, she sent it on its way.

It was on that night that Arya disappeared, and unlike before, she did not return.

**************

“Don’t go,” Sansa pleaded, her eyes wet with tears. She kissed her husband fiercely, and though he responded, he did not submit.

“I have to.”

Desperately, her fingers fell to the laces of his tunic, but Sandor calmly laid his hand over hers to stop the movement.

“Fucking won’t keep me from going, little bird,” he said gently, before jesting lightly in an attempt to lift her spirits. “Though I’m still happy to oblige.”

Her lower lip trembling, Sansa buried her face in her husband’s shoulder and began to cry. With a heavy sigh, he moved a hand to rub across her back.

When another corpse had surfaced with the mark of an anchor deep in its back, Sandor had decided to take matters into his own hands.

Angrily, he had made his way to the mansion on the hill, and tore through the tomes in its library for information on the beasts that had risen to terrorize the hamlet once more. With an armful of papers and scrolls, he had returned home, and it was only the shred of humanity that remained in the woman who watched his movements that allowed him to leave with his life.

Sansa had returned to find him bent over the table in the study that had once belonged to her father, poring over the stolen notes and pacing restlessly.

Despite her pleas, he insisted that it was his duty to protect the hamlet and that it should never have fallen on the shoulders of strangers.

In the morning, he would go to the cove in the full armor of his post and with his sword at his side, and he would send the drowned crew back to the depths where they belonged.

Though she knew she could not forbid him, Sansa feared for his life.

“I can’t lose you too,” she whimpered.

“You won’t,” Sandor soothed, running his fingers through her long auburn hair. “I’ll come back to you, little bird. I’ll always come back to you.”

They spent the night wrapped in an intimate embrace, but when morning came, Sandor still tore himself away from the warmth of their bed and donned his armor. Sansa watched from the gate long after he and his men had disappeared from view, and as she turned back once again, her letter found its answer, far down the Old Road.


	11. More Than a Weary Traveler

_To Whom it May Concern,_

_We need your help. Our land has been overrun by all kind of monster and evil. We have been able to hold our own these past months but as they grow bolder we steadily lose the meager protection we had. With that my sister, and one of our best fighters, has been kidnapped by these Things. Please, heed our call. Help us. Without it I fear we won’t last long._

_Mayor S_

The rest of the signature had taken the bullet that struck the courier’s chest, and the highwayman that stood above his corpse with a still smoking pistol read the letter over once more, frowning beneath his ragged bandana.

Perhaps the letter explained the heavier traffic along the Old Road in the past months. For a time, it had been profitable, but the numbers had slowly dwindled once again and Destain’s coinpurse was growing light.

Taking the coins from the courier’s coat, the young man dragged the body from view and then moved to stand beside the worn and well-traveled road. In time, a carriage would come, and he could ride to the lands in the letter. A highwayman was never the kind to turn down the potential for gold, and so, he would wait.

**************

The undead crew that had once worked for the hamlet’s mayor had holed themselves deep within the water-logged tunnels beneath the cove. The small band of guards that joined Sandor on his quest were weary by the time they reached the enemy, but after a short rest around the warmth of a campfire, their spirits were high and they were ready for battle.

The faces that peered from the shadowy depths were bloated and grotesque, and the cursed anchor that they were still forced to bear glinted in the light of the party’s torches.

When Sandor drew his sword, a moan of agony echoed from what remained of the crew’s captain. Broken teeth emerged from within a pale and mottled face, and the voice that spoke sounded weary and despondent.

“Have you come to free us?”

Sandor snorted. “We’ve come to kill you.”

There was a brief pause before the response. “They are one and the same.”

The guards exchanged a glance. They had expected violence and evil from the creatures that the crew had become, not a strange and pitiful self-awareness.

“What is it that you need to be freed from?” Sandor asked snidely. He did not trust them, no matter how different they seemed from the tales that he had once been told.

_“Them,”_ the voice hissed, and the entire mass wriggled in what seemed to be discomfort, or even fear. “We thought we had been released when the sorcerer’s heart was torn from his chest, but now his son has called us back to the realm of the living.”

“Son?” Sandor echoed, his grip tightening about the hilt of his sword. “The mayor had a son?”

A long silence met his question, and when the voice spoke again, it was quieter, and far more sinister. “Yes. Far more powerful than the father, especially with the girl at his side. She is stronger than he knows. Even now she calls to us, to enact her revenge. Her thoughts are elsewhere as we speak, but soon they will turn again and we will be forced to do her bidding.”

A shiver ran through the men, and for a moment, their terror returned. None of them had seen Arya for what she had become, and now, it was far too late.

“Who is he? The son?” Sandor asked, his voice clipped and impatient. He had come to kill the monsters, not play foolish mind games with them.

There was a shuffle of movement from the shadows and the crew emerged, grotesque and shimmering wetly in the torchlight. Their eyes were as black as the portal from whence they had come, and the captain managed only a final answer before his hand was drawn to the sword at his hip.

“You call him Qyburn.”

**************

When idly cleaning the mansion did nothing to calm Sansa’s nerves, she returned to the hamlet’s gates to wait. Sandor had been gone for two days now, and though she knew that it would take time to navigate the passageways beneath the cove, she could not banish the thought of him meeting his end at the hands of the drowned crew.

The townsfolk watched her as she passed with expressions of misery and pleading. None of them had imagined what terrible evil would fall upon the hamlet, and they looked to her for hope and safety. Sansa, for her part, needed hope of her own.

As she waited by the gate, the sound of carriage wheels broke her from her thoughts and her heart leapt to her throat. Nobody new had come to the hamlet in nearly a week, not even since her second letter.

In the time that she waited for Sandor’s return, she had looked over the notes that he had recovered from the former hall of the mayor. In them she had found a map, with three sections of the ruins marked with thick black x’s. Further study had revealed that they had once been temples, long since abandoned, and that the last people to walk their halls had been the heroes who had once saved the hamlet, with her father at their helm.

She was sure that she would find Arya there, and that with enough convincing, her sister could return to her. She did not fully understand the change which had come over her, but she was not willing to give up on the only family that she had left.

Lifting the hood of her robes as the carriage approached, Sansa took a deep breath and steeled her nerves. If Sandor could go off and try to save the hamlet himself, then she could save her sister.

When she lifted a hand, the carriage slowed, and she passed the map to the driver with a quiet word before opening the door and sitting on the empty seat. The man across from her eyed her with surprise and suspicion.

“Please hurry,” she urged the driver quietly, and he obeyed.

A long silence passed between Sansa and her companion, and her heart hammered in her chest. She knew what she was doing was foolish, but she was not unskilled in combat, and if the man before her had answered her letter, then he too would be prepared for battle.

In the end, the highwayman was the first to speak.

“Who are you?”

For a long moment, Sansa hesitated. She had signed the letter with her true name and spoken of Arya’s…disappearance. To admit to her identity would suggest that she was acting on her feelings alone, and any man, let alone a stranger, would be hard pressed to follow someone with such motivations into certain peril.

As she scrambled to think of an answer, she thought of a day long ago when she and Sandor had been children. How she had fed a bird from her hand, carefully stroking its mottled feathers. He had called her ‘little bird’ ever since.

“My name is Lark,” she replied finally. “I’m from the hamlet just down the road. I assume you’re here because of our mayor’s letter.”

The suspicion did not fade from his features.

“Yes,” he said. “I was hoping to speak with him when you hijacked my carriage.” A slight gleam appeared in his eyes before he added. “I never thought I would be on the other side of such an experience.”

In no mood for jests, Sansa ignored his comment. “And who are you?”

“Destain,” he replied, pulling the bandana down to his neck and revealing the entirety of his features. As Sansa looked at him more closely, she was surprised to see how young he was. Had Rickon lived, he would have been only slightly older than the boy across from her.

He cocked an eyebrow as he glanced out the window of the carriage. “Why are we riding away from the town…Lark?”

“You read the letter. You know what it says.” She turned her gaze away, lest her worry give her away. “We’re going to find the mayor’s sister.”

As the highwayman squarely met her eyes, the carriage rolled to a stop, and Sansa reached for the door, eager to escape the young man’s probing gaze.

Though hesitant, and with a hand on the grip of his pistol, he followed, and then gazed up at the ruins before them in awe. Though Sansa was impressed, for she had not known of the ruined temples’ existence before the map that Sandor had retrieved, they frightened her. Surely there was a reason why her father had never spoken of them, and why they had been kept hidden for so many years.

“What is this place?” Destain asked, moving forward to wander amongst the crumbled pillars that marked the temple’s entrance.

“I don’t know,” Sansa replied honestly. “But she’s here.” She could feel it.

**************

The ruins were far from the hamlet, deep within the forest beyond its walls. The people who lived within the town knew nothing of their existence, for they had long been buried, their secrets held close and taken to the grave.

Many years before, Qyburn’s father had used the site for his experiments, and in the search that followed his disappearance, the four heroes had walked within its walls. Now, a generation later, the charlatan’s descendant had returned, and at his side was a woman more powerful than he realized.

“My father had these ruins marked in his notes,” Qyburn said as he lit his torch, a long hall suddenly illuminated before them. “I believe that if we open portals in each, their pull will awaken something great beneath the hamlet. Something that drove my father to madness; a power strong enough to reshape the world.”

Arya took in the ruins in silence, her expression giving no sign of response to the sorcerer’s words. Beneath the dust and dirt that coated the stone floors were the scuffed remains of boot prints, left behind by her father and his followers. Lyanna had once walked the same halls, her anger leading her toward its end in much the same way, though her head and heart had been clear.

“I could have learned so much from him. Surpassed him years before now. If only I had known.”

When the ruins split before them, they turned to the left. Strange and ancient whispers seemed to echo from the long shadows and the torch wavered as if aware of their presence. An evil was awakening, a darkness that knew no end and no beginning.

The stifling horror followed them deep within the ruins, and when they reached its final chamber, it seemed to thrum in the air, a tantalizing invitation for their ruinous intentions.

“Here,” Qyburn said, though the word was unnecessary. Arya could feel the thick heat of the air, smell the rot and decay that belied its former experiments. It was powerful, even without them, and it banished all that remained of her former self, eagerly toying with the witch that remained.

“Perhaps it is my role now to be the ancestor,” he mused, the foreign pull already deep within his mind. “To leave behind my work to an heir.”

His hand moved to Arya’s cheek and he stroked it delicately, his fingers cold and dead against the stifling heat. “A son to fulfill this world’s destiny if I fail. One with great power…the child of two who knew what lies beyond.”

A deep and agonizing lust sank its fingers within his very core and he trembled with the sudden force of it. Never before had he wanted—_needed_—something so desperately. The unfathomable blackness of Arya’s gaze was captivating and deadly.

She could feel a struggle within herself, one which she felt she was somehow both winning and losing, and then with a sudden snap it broke apart within her. She felt empty and cold, and for only a second, Qyburn saw her eyes flash a steely grey.

“Do not touch me.” The crack of her voice struck whatever force had compelled him and he drew back as her flinty gaze held his own. “Any children I was meant to bear were not of your blood. They were to be of the blood that spilled into the streets when my lover was taken from me. With his death I am barren, and I will give you no heirs.”

She turned her back to him and faced the center of the room. “We are not meant to rule this world.”

**************

The doors to the temple all but crumbled beneath their fingers, wet and heavy with rot. The room within was suspiciously bright, and as they entered, they saw that the roof had almost entirely collapsed, allowing the sunlight from above to filter through and illuminate the dusty and neglected walls around them.

Destain hummed absently, his thumb stroking at the holster on his hip. “I imagine it gets drafty in here.”

Sansa cast him a look of disbelief and when he caught it, he shrugged and wandered further in. Though he may have been an able fighter, his flippancy could prove dangerous.

Without hesitation, he took the lead, pistol in hand, and Sansa was relieved. She was afraid of what they might find, and of what her sister might have become.

The farther they traveled from the entrance, the darker the ruins became, and when they slowed to a cautious shamble, she lifted her mace and spoke.

_“Illuminare!”_

When they came to a fork, they turned right, and a muffled skittering announced the presence of the temple’s most recent tenants. They walked at a slow pace, carefully looking into the alcoves they passed along the hallway. Most contained rotting barrels and long broken bottles of wine, staining the stones beneath them.

Sansa was running her hands along the wall to clear the dust from the marble when she heard a sharp crack, and she whirled about to see a line of smoke curling from the barrel of Destain’s pistol, and a grotesquely large and bloated spider curled at his feet.

She whimpered reflexively at the sight and the highwayman looked at her with a darkly amused twinkle in his eyes. “Good,” he jested in response to the unspoken complaint. “This should be enjoyable for us both then.”

The scurrying had not ceased, and soon, the first beast was joined by several others. As Destain reloaded his gun she murmured an incantation and a burst of flame crackled from the steel of her mace, reducing the spindly vermin to nothing more than a pile of ash. The third avoided the bullet aimed for its abdomen, and sank its fangs into the highwayman’s arm.

When he let out a cry of pain, Sansa crushed it with her mace, and Destain stumbled back, his hand on his arm. A thick green fluid oozed from between his fingers.

His face was pale in the light from Sansa’s mace, and though she wished for nothing more than to find and save her sister, she had always been a caring woman, made more so by her time in the sanitarium. She did not know the boy, but she would not be responsible for another death.

“Come, let me look at that.”

She led the way to the next room, relieved to find it empty. Though it was thickly covered in webs, its denizens had been those that met them in the hall, and so they would be safe to rest within, at least for a time.

As Destain removed the bandana from around his neck and tied it in a tourniquet about the wound, Sansa removed the few small bundles of wood she had packed. After lighting them with a murmured word, she sat beside her companion.

“How deep is it?”

He shrugged noncommittally and hesitated for a moment before replying. “Deep enough.”

Sansa nodded worriedly and gestured for him to hold out his arm. When he did so, she looked it over carefully and then placed a hand over the makeshift tourniquet.

_“Curare.”_

Though she could not pull the spreading blackness from his veins, it receded somewhat, at least enough to keep him alive. When they returned to the hamlet, he could stay in the sanitarium and the more experienced healers could rid him of the blight.

“A fighter and a healer, Lark?”

For a moment, Sansa was confused, before recalling the name that she had given. After a long silence, she replied.

“I learned what I had to to survive. We had little choice. In the end, those who could not kill were killed themselves.” She thought of Jeyne, and her brother Bran, and closed her eyes against the terrible memories that filled her mind.

After a moment, Destain spoke again, in an attempt to change the subject. “So why do they call you Lark?”

A warm flush crept to Sansa’s cheeks at his unintentional jab at her lie, and at the thought of her husband, and she stood to avoid his gaze. “I suppose for the same reason that they call you Destain. It’s the name I was given.”

His incredulous stare fell on her back as she approached a worn and crumbling desk in the far corner, absently searching its drawers. Though she was merely looking for something to busy herself and avoid her companion for the moment, her search revealed a faded journal and she removed it carefully before reading aloud from one of its pages.

_It has been years since our master first uncovered the portal, and still he forces us to toil in these temples. He claims that the darkness beneath the manor is but a small part of a greater evil, and that similar portals remain beneath these ancient temples. Once they have all been opened, the Great One will return, and then, we will all be as powerful as the gods. Until then, we will dig._

A lengthy silence followed, and in the end, the highwayman was the one to break it. “Well let’s just hope this “Great One” isn’t waiting for us around the corner, eh?”

When Sansa shot him a look of decided unamusement, he deflated slightly, and with a sigh, he rose to his feet. “I suppose we’d best continue.”

Nodding in agreement, she snuffed out the dwindling campfire, and with her mace lighting the way, they walked on, further into the darkness.

When they took a twisting staircase down to a lower level, the walls about them began to change, depicting a strange and terrible scene. Tentacles began to grasp at the corners and twist about one another, interwoven with images of men in dark robes, a strange language written above them. It made the travelers uneasy, but still they continued.

They had been traveling for what seemed like miles in a dreadfully eerie silence when Destain cleared his throat.

“Tell me about the Mayor’s sister.”

Sansa’s heart clenched at the mention of Arya and she took a deep breath before responding, trying to keep the grief from her tone.

“She’s the strongest and bravest woman I’ve ever known,” she said quietly. “Several months ago, before she was taken, and before these monsters returned to the hamlet, we were attacked by brigands. They came on the day she was to be wed, and by the time the flames died and the brigands were driven back, only she and the mayor remained. The rest of their family and the man she was to marry were all killed.” 

She heard the highwayman take a shaky breath behind her, and she fought the tears that threatened to fall. “Less than two dozen survived the attack, and in the aftermath, several others took their lives. But she…the mayor’s sister, she lived.”

“And now she’s gone,” Destain finished quietly.

“Yes,” Sansa agreed. “Now she’s gone.” Though she had lived, Sansa was not sure that the Arya she had loved before Gregor’s attack would ever truly return.

When their conversation faded, the silence did not return, and instead they heard a distant but distinct murmur. It was strangely rhythmic, as though a chorus of voices was chanting in unison, and the sound sent a shiver down Sansa’s spine. Her fist tightened about the hilt of her mace, and behind her, Destain effortlessly flipped his pistol from its holster to his hand.

The chanting grew steadily louder as they approached a sturdy stone door, and above them, a familiar voice rose. 

_“Ykadishtu shoggor! Ygoka kadishtu ph’n’ghft! Ygoka n’gha kadishtu ph’shugg!” _

A deep dread filled Sansa as they approached the doors. She had been trained in the magic of God’s light from a young age, and the words that echoed from within the temple’s central chamber were far from those that she had been taught. They were darker, and much more deadly.  
Destain looked to Sansa for the final command, and after steeling her nerves, she nodded. Together, they hauled the massive door open, and her heart leapt to her throat at the sight that greeted them.

All about the walls, the sordid mural continued, the tentacles seeming almost to squirm in the flickering light, reaching toward a horrible figure above them. It was some creature, more terrible even then those which had returned to the hamlet, and Sansa knew as she met its painted gaze that it was the true source of the power which the mayor had sought. Which now another was trying to awaken.

In the center of the room, a dark portal swirled thickly, churning endlessly as it spat its foul black ichor on the cultists that knelt beneath it in a macabre parallel of the mural beyond. Before it, surrounded by a smoky haze and with eyes as black as night, Arya stood. Her gaze fell on her sister and Sansa couldn’t help the tears that welled in her eyes.

“Arya…” Her name left her lips as a plea, but even as she spoke, she knew that the woman before her was her sister no longer.

She could feel Destain’s eyes on her, but she remained transfixed by Arya’s vacant stare. The cultists continued their chanting, but the spell was broken by the sound of a gunshot. The bullet missed its target and the highwayman swore as he clutched at his arm.

Eyes burning with fury, Arya raised her arms, her voice clear and thunderous over the continued drone of the cultists.

_“Uln ronnyth!”_

The chanting did not stop in a moment, but rather began to drift away as the men bowed around the portal began to writhe in agony, the skin melting off their bones and stitching together as a towering figure began to form before Arya’s outstretched hands.

Sansa’s hands trembled as the monstrous ghoul rose from the corpses of the cultists, and a strangled cry escaped her lips as Arya whirled about and disappeared into the portal, vanishing as it closed behind her.

The crack of Destain’s pistol broke Sansa from her reverie and she tightened her grip on her mace, calling forth the power of God to destroy the portal’s evil creation.

_“Iudicium!”_

The undead creature bellowed in pain and anger as a bolt of light struck it in its patchwork chest, and the telltale report of a pistol followed, blowing a hole in its snarling head.

Still it advanced, and as Destain reloaded and let off another shot into its chest, Sansa swung her mace with a yell that unleashed her helplessness and rage. The beast’s claws tore her hood to shreds, but missed her cheek, allowing her to crush it beneath her weapon with a powerful blow. When it twitched beneath the heavy steel, another bullet was emptied into its skull and just as the last tendrils of the portal faded from view, it stilled.

Tears of frustration stained Sansa’s cheeks as she raised her mace and stumbled forward to where her sister had stood, but a hand on her arm kept her back.

“We can’t stay,” the highwayman said gravely, and behind his words, Sansa heard a low rumble. “Whatever she did, it’s bringing this place down. If we stay we’ll be buried alive.”

After a moment, she nodded, and when he took off the way they had come, she followed. They were in the ruins that marked the temple’s entrance when it finally gave way, and they watched together in silence as the stone toppled to the ground, sending dust and dirt into the air.

Sansa’s face was still wet as she stared at the wreckage, and a long moment later, her companion spoke.

“What the hell happened back there? You owe me some answers, Lark.”

Sansa sighed heavily, but did not meet his gaze. Finally, she spoke.

“My name is Sansa. Mayor Sansa Clegane. And that woman was once my sister.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to even claim to have any passing fluency in R'lyehian, but I did look up words and basic sentence structure online way back when I wrote this, and the rough English translations are below:
> 
> “Ykadishtu shoggor! Ygoka kadishtu ph’n’ghft! Ygoka n’gha kadishtu ph’shugg!”  
[Answer me, form of realm of darkness! Grant me knowledge over darkness! Grant me death over the realm of man!]
> 
> “Uln ronnyth!” [Summon servant of the cult!]


	12. The Price We Pay for Sanity

Though a million questions swirled through the mind of the young highwayman who had been unwittingly dragged into the hamlet’s fate, the grief on his companion’s features was clear, and so for the moment, he held his tongue.

The carriage that had brought them was waiting beyond the ruins, and they rode back to the hamlet in an oppressive silence. Sansa had wiped the tears from her cheeks, but they remained wet, for no amount of effort could keep the image of Arya from her mind. Her anger had changed her, molded her into some sort of mindless evil, and in truth, Sansa feared her.

A grand commotion met them at the gates of the hamlet as Sansa stepped from the carriage, and as its people crowded toward their mayor in relief a bellow issued from the back, harsh and furious.

“What the _fuck_ were you thinking?!”

Sansa shrank back slightly as Sandor’s massive figure separated from the crowd and advanced upon them and Destain raised his eyebrows.

“Your father?”

As Sansa sighed, Sandor tore off his helmet and her companion’s expression shifted in response.

“Husband…”

Although rage radiated off of him in waves, when he reached his wife’s side, he merely wrapped her in a tight embrace, holding her against him as she clung to him in return. When he pulled away to kiss her fiercely, she murmured an apology against his lips.

“I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t have left, but I had to find her, Sandor. I had to.”

He shushed her gently and kissed her once more before his ire returned and directed itself at the young man standing at his wife’s side.

_“You!”_

Destain stumbled back as a thick finger prodded him forcefully in the chest and Sansa intervened hastily, laying a hand on Sandor’s arm and urging him to retreat.

“Sandor, please. He had no hand in this.”

The highwayman steadied himself with a visible cringe and when Sandor noticed the makeshift tourniquet about his arm, his anger faded slightly, only to be replaced with open mistrust.

“You’re going to have a lot to answer for, boy.”

At that, Destain snorted. “_I_ will? I have no bloody idea what’s going on. If anyone needs answers, it’s me.”

After exchanging a brief glance with her husband, Sansa sighed heavily and nodded. “Not here, and not now. For tonight, you’ll stay in the sanitarium. At dawn, come to the manor beyond the tavern. We have much to explain.”

**************

The hamlet was a dismal place, Destain thought. Though the sun shone above it, it seemed dim and dull, and its citizens wandered listlessly through its streets, their eyes devoid of emotion as they shuffled past him.

He did not truly understand what had happened, and so he did not realize what it was they saw within their village. Where he saw drab cobblestones and sagging roofs, their eyes remembered the blood that had run through the streets, and the fires that had burned their homes to the ground. Though the hamlet had been rebuilt, it was not the home they had once known, and they would never forget that.

The Sanitarium was almost empty when he managed to find it, with only a few of the beds occupied. They were the men who had gone with Sandor to fight the drowned crew, and their haunted eyes frightened the young highwayman.

Sandor had lived through much worse than what the crew had been able to afflict upon them, and though he too had been weary as they emerged from the cove, his fear at returning home to find Sansa gone had swiftly displaced any lingering damage the cursed pirates had caused.

“You’re not from here.” It was an older woman who spoke, her hair greying swiftly beneath her robes, still the black of mourning. 

Destain shook his head. “I answered a letter from your mayor and accompanied her in the search for her sister.”

She grew alert at that, and her expression shifted from vague suspicion to intense interest. “And did you find Arya? Is she safe?”

The highwayman paused for a long moment. The woman they had met in the ruins had been hardly even that, more a twisted and manipulated monster than the woman she might have once been.

“For now,” he answered, and the vestal nodded.

It wasn’t much, but Sansa and Arya had grown up with her sweet Jeyne, and so they were all that Caunter had left. It was only with her knees to the abbey floor and her heart with God that she allowed herself to hope that Arya could be saved.

For the first time, she noticed the bandage about his arm, and she led him to one of the nearby beds. “Rest,” she urged gently. “I will bring a tonic when it is ready, and until then…” She sighed heavily, and the haze of grief clouded her gaze once more. “Until then, I will add you to my prayers.”

**************

Since Arya’s disappearance, Sansa had rarely looked anything but worried and tired, but as Sandor told her what he had learned, an expression of hopeless despair joined the despondence of her features.

“Qyburn? His son?”

Sandor nodded, watching absently as his wife busied herself with tidying up. “And the one who sent Gregor to our gates, I’m sure of it. I should have killed him the moment he stepped from his carriage. I should have seen it, even then.”

Sansa’s eyes were misty as she turned to face him. “What lies must he be feeding to Arya?” she asked bitterly. “He’s the one who sowed all of this misery. He used Jaqen’s murder, and that of our father, mother, brothers…to turn her against the hamlet. It was his evil that created her anger and now she’s become too blind to see through whatever ghastly promises he’s made.”

Sandor shook his head, his expression dark. “The woman you’re chasing is no longer your sister. He’s twisted her mind and now it simply festers in the shell of her body. You must prepare yourself for what we may be forced to do.”

Sansa nodded resolutely, but she was unable to pretend that the idea brought her anything but grief and Sandor gathered her in his arms as she began to cry.

“What have we done to deserve all this pain?” she asked between sobs. “I’ve dedicated my life to God and He’s done nothing but forsake us.”

Sandor had no reply to that, so he simply held his wife, softly kissing her hair as she managed a shaky breath. She looked up at him with a grateful smile, and their lips met in a deep kiss. When his hands wandered down her waist she pressed herself to him, but a knock at the door broke them apart.

Sansa smiled apologetically and gave him a final kiss against his scowling mouth before moving to open it and letting Destain inside.

The young highwayman looked better than he had the night before, and the poison was fading swiftly from his veins, but he still looked weary. It was a familiar expression, for it was the same that wrought itself in the features of everyone in the hamlet.

For a moment, they all stood in silence, unsure of where to begin. It was Sandor who finally spoke. “Follow me.”

**************

When they reached the end of their tale, Destain let out a long sigh, his gaze wandering along the scribbled notes and maps that the Cleganes had gathered in what had once been Eddard’s study.

“Well,” he said finally, a hint of bitterness in his tone, “I hope we can all be more open with each other from here on out…‘Lark’…” He gave Sansa a pointed look.

At the mention of her assumed name, Sandor’s eyebrow rose, and when Sansa flushed in shame and embarrassment, he snorted in amusement.

“We’ve told you everything,” she replied. “We don’t know the rest. We don’t know what Arya and Qyburn are planning, or where they might be. The only clue we have is this map.” She gestured toward the one in the center of the table, marked with three black x’s over the long abandoned ruins beyond the hamlet.

“Since you saw her at the first,” Sandor began, arms crossed over his chest. “We should move on to the next. It seems we were right about those ruins being a part of their plan.”

Both Sansa and Destain nodded at that and when Sandor removed his dagger from the table and returned it to its place at his side, the latter couldn’t keep from commenting snidely.

“I hope you can fight better with that blade than you can draw.” His gaze fell to a crudely curved swine over the warrens, and Sandor scowled deeply.

“I can certainly fight better than you, boy,” he snarled. “Guns are a coward’s weapon.”

Destain’s eyes narrowed and he took a step toward the much larger man, but Sansa stepped between them, and they cooled slightly.

“We don’t have time to fight amongst ourselves,” she said quietly. “Every second we’re here, my sister is still under that monster’s influence. We need to go. We need to find her.”

**************

The second ruin was nearly identical to the first, and Sandor wondered idly as Sansa had before how they had gone unnoticed for so many years. There must have been great effort to keep them secret, and he shuddered to think of what the cause for such secrecy might be.

They stood together at the door for a moment, in silence. If Arya was within, she might simply escape once more, and if she chose to fight, then they would be forced to make a choice.

“You first, boy,” Sandor said finally, hefting open the door. 

Destain cocked an eyebrow and walked inside, but not before passing off the rag-wrapped stick in his hand. “Of course, but if I’m in the lead, that means you have to hold the torch.”

Sandor’s snide smirk morphed into a scowl as the younger man looked pointedly at the burns across his face. With a muttered curse, he pushed past to the vanguard and shoved the torch roughly back into his hands. Sansa followed with a heavy sigh.

The second set of ruins was not so dilapidated as the first, and the lack of sunlight sent its halls into deep shadow. Sansa cast her light with a murmured word as Destain lit the torch, and a long hall appeared before them, its end beyond their sight.

Sansa drew strength from her husband’s presence, but her voice still trembled when she countered their unspoken fears. “We must go on.”

**************

The evil that Qyburn sought was ancient, and more powerful than any mortal could conceive. He thought he could harness it and bend it to his will, but he was a mere puppet in its grasp. It was not some creature like those he controlled in his father’s stead. It was god, a creator and destroyer of life. It lie not beneath the earth, but within it, the root of all evil.

This was not the first time someone had sought to awaken it, and it would not be the last. In times long past, it had been beaten back by a few brave souls, but they did not have the power to destroy it, only to banish it until another came again with dark ambition and a darker soul.

Qyburn was a fool, and he would prove to be his own undoing. The woman at his side was not motivated by her own selfish reasons, but by a desire for revenge that though sinister, was pure, and consuming.

She could feel its presence beneath her, all around her, within her. What little was left of her own mind understood that to awaken it would be to bring death and destruction, but while the heart of darkness was unyielding and unforgiving, the human heart was a fragile creature, and if the one who had brought her such pain was caught within its snare, then she would play her part.

**************

By the time they reached the end of the hall, its walls had grown dark with the same reaching and writhing tentacles that had adorned the first ruin. Though Sansa and Destain merely cast them a cursory, albeit worried glance, Sandor’s eyes followed the pattern with a look of growing dread. The others knew what would meet them at the ruin’s end, but he had no expectation beyond the discovery of his wife’s sister, and would be sorely unprepared for the gaping portal that awaited.

They had taken a left at the fork before them and the mural had expanded to include the kneeling hordes of cultists when Sandor stopped to examine the painting. His mind elsewhere, Destain failed to stop, and as he collided with Sandor’s large frame, the torch fell from his hand and snuffed out as it met the dirt beneath their feet. Caught by surprise, Sansa’s concentration faltered and her mace dimmed, leaving them in complete darkness.

“Fucking hell…” 

They fumbled for a bit in confusion. Destain dropped to his knees and groped blindly for the torch as Sansa murmured her words of magic, but in her distracted state, they failed, and Sandor swore again.

Finally, the highwayman’s hand brushed the splintered wood, but his cry of triumph was drowned out by a horrible, appalling echo. They froze and their eyes, minimally adjusted to the blackness that surrounded them, caught movement at the end of the hall, the shambling of something colossal and grotesque.

Sandor cursed viciously as he drew his sword, Destain scrambled to his feet, and Sansa clutched the cross about her neck.

“God be with us.”

There was a brief, tense silence, broken only by the sound of their labored breathing, and then a roar as the creature lurched forward.

The highwayman’s pistol gave a hollow click as the monster struck out with a grasping tentacle, misfiring, and it continued its obdurous advancement. A dozen red eyes glowed in the darkness and Sansa felt her resolve weaken, her hand trembling as it clutched her holy symbol.

Sandor’s sword caught its slick flesh as it lashed out once again and it gave a cry of pain, a horrid sound that made the adventurers shiver.

Destain raised his gun once more, and as he pulled the trigger a sharp crack rang out and the burst of sparks sent the creature reeling back with another cry.

“It doesn’t like the light!” Sandor shouted, slashing out as it made its undulating withdrawal.

At his words, Sansa’s strength returned and she took a shaky breath, raising her mace above her and shouting over the sound of the monster’s stentorious lament. _“Gloria!” _

A dazzling light burst forth at her words and as the beast cowered in the face of it, the vestal’s two companions pushed forward, Sandor’s sword slashing across its mass of eyes as Destain’s bullet found its place within its gaping maw.

_“Manus luminis!” _

Without the darkness in which it thrived, the shambling monstrosity quivered and wailed, and its hideous form was reduced to a sickly oozing corpse beneath their weapons. As its cries died and silence returned to the hall, they retreated, adrenaline high and leaving them trembling and disoriented.

“I’ve never seen a creature like that,” Destain said shakily. “It’s as though it was summoned when the torch went out.”

Sandor nodded in agreement, watching grimly as the highwayman relit it torch and the flames danced across the slick flesh of the vanquished beast.

“Evil has returned to the hamlet,” Sansa said quietly. “And it takes many forms.”

Her expression was one of hopelessness and fear, and her companions knew that it was her sister she thought of, and not what lie before them.

Sandor laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps we should rest for a moment, gather our wits.”

Slowly, Sansa nodded, and they made their camp in an adjoining room. Destain attempted to lighten their moods with humor, but Sansa only retreated further within herself. Sandor sat in quiet reflection as the highwayman cleaned his guns and between them, Sansa prayed.

**************

Arya waited for them patiently. She could hear the cries of the shambler as it was forced into the light, and she knew that soon they would reach the final chamber.

She would not fight them when they came, for she knew that they stood no chance against the power that consumed her. If only she could make them see, make them understand. There was no hope for survival. When Qyburn was finished, the world would die, and there was nothing they could do to end its destruction. Until then, they could join her, and together they could exact their revenge, before their time was over.

She listened to the crackle of their campfire, and the murmur of their voices. The words were too soft to hear, but she could imagine them. Sansa would be praying to the God she still foolishly believed in. Sandor would soothe her, though he would not believe his own words. And the boy would merely jest, for he did not understand what was at stake.

Their footsteps were loud as they approached, even over the whispers of the portal behind her, and she watched through unseeing eyes as they came to meet her.

Sansa’s eyes were wet with tears as she gazed at her sister, but Sandor’s expression was grim. _Perhaps he already understands,_ Arya thought. He had never seen the good in the world that Sansa had.

“Arya,” she said softly. “Please…”

“Don’t you understand, Sansa?” Arya replied hollowly. “This world has done nothing for us, and it is time for it to end. You have merely glimpsed the edge of the abyss, but it is enough to trigger the cycle of revelation. Now, like me, you will begin to see things as they truly are.”

Sansa shook her head, her tears escaping and falling down her cheeks. “You cannot live like this. Come home to us, Arya. Abandon this foolish quest for vengeance.”

“Foolish?” Her dark eyes flashed, and she felt her anger rising in her chest. “You’re the fool to believe that there’s any hope left. This has all happened before, and it will happen again, as it must. Our time here is finished, there is nothing left for us.”

“Nothing?” Sansa echoed softly. “Does family mean nothing to you? Are you so willing to lose what you still have?”

“My family is dead.” Arya said coldly. She no longer felt anything as she looked at the woman before her. She thought that she could be made to see the truth, but she was no better than the rest of the ignorant and uncaring world. And so she would die with it. “You are no longer a Stark, nor the woman I thought you were.”

The portal hissed behind her, and its call was inviting. If she succumbed to its pull, it would take the last shred of her soul that remained, and Arya would be lost. As was her fate.

“Know this:” The black ichor caressed her pale skin and her mind shuddered pleasantly at its touch. “The end is coming, just as it did in our father’s time, and it cannot be stopped.”

Her body grew taut as the portal embraced her, and as she was pulled within, her eyes snapped open, a grey that burned clear and bright against the darkness of the realm beyond. There was horrified revelation within them, and it laced her final words.

“Ruin has come to our world.”


	13. A Terrifying Figure Emerged from the Darkness

Sansa was silent the whole way back to the hamlet, her gaze distant and hazy with tears. She had thought that she could reason with Arya, but it seemed that she was wrong.

The townsfolk watched them as they returned, their hopeless and downtrodden spirits reflecting those of the returning group. Despite everything, they wanted to believe that all was not lost, and with each failure, it grew harder to pretend that could ever be true.

Destain was turning to the inn when Sandor stopped him. Sansa was several feet away, slipping quietly into their home, and she could not hear her husband’s words.

“I need you to promise me something, boy.”

The highwayman hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

“When the time comes, ready your pistol and shoot true. I love my wife, and I loved my good-sister when she was still with us, but that monster is not the Arya we once knew. Sansa cannot see that, but you can. I’d rather see her destroyed than watch her destroy us all. Do you understand?”

Destain thought of the woman he had seen, eyes of pitch in her pale face, and a portal of grotesque evil at her back. He had not known her in the days when she had laughed at her sister’s side, and lived with the man she loved. It was easy for him to imagine her corpse, a bullet lodged between those unholy eyes. If it meant his own survival, he would shoot true, and his bullet would find its mark.

“Aye. I understand. And I’ll do what must be done.”

**************

Sansa was in Eddard’s old study when Sandor returned, notes scattered about on the table before her. She cast him hardly more than a cursory glance as he entered, intent on her search for something that could save her sister. Anything.

“Little bird…”

She faltered slightly at the sound of his voice, and when she looked up again, her eyes welled with fresh tears. “There has to be something in father’s notes,” she said, her words laced with desperation. “There has to be. They defeated his father and so we can defeat him…can’t we?”

Sandor sighed heavily and moved to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “You can’t do this to yourself, Sansa. We’re facing something much different than what our fathers did before us. Qyburn has grown more powerful than his father ever was, and with Arya at his side, he’s accomplishing what the mayor never could. If we knew where he was, maybe we could stop him, but we don’t, little bird. He’s vanished, and he’s using Arya as his…puppet.” He sighed again. “This is far more than just the workings of a sorcerer mad with power. He’s awakening something…and it may already be too late.”

At that, Sansa began to cry, and she turned to bury her face in her husband’s chest. “Why couldn’t I have stopped this?” she sobbed. “I should have spent more time with her after the attack, should have seen what was happening to her.”

Sandor shook his head and placed a kiss on her forehead. “You did everything you could, little bird. It was Gregor and Qyburn who did this, and no fault of our own.” He felt a twinge of pain in his chest even as he said it. He could say what he liked, but he still held their deaths on his own shoulders, and knew that he always would.

“I’m so tired, Sandor,” she whispered. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I feel sick, and my body aches. I just want Arya to be home again, and safe.”

He kissed her gently and stroked a thumb across her cheek. “We’ll stay in the hamlet and rest, just for a few days. You can get your strength back, and then we can go find her.”

Still sniffling, Sansa nodded, and she sighed softly when Sandor lifted her to sit on the edge of the table and brought his uneven lips to her neck. “Until then…don’t worry. Just forget about everything beyond these walls. Forget about everything, except for us.”

Her moan was captured by the insistent pressure of his mouth on hers, and already feeling her worries slipping away through the fog of desire that clouded her mind, she obeyed.

**************

“Look what’s become of you.” Qyburn’s voice was quiet as he marveled at the sight before him. When Arya had slipped through the portal in the second set of ruins, the god that slumbered within the earth had accepted her with open arms, molding her into a vessel for his destructive power.

She was clothed in bloodied rags, remnants of the robes of cultists who had died for their cause, and a high collar of fur framed her pale features, taken from the cowl once worn by her father’s killer. Her eyes were dark and glassy, and they shone dully from their sockets, all life drained from them. Across her face, the heart of darkness had left its mark: a gruesome handprint, its bloody imprint stark against the white of her skin.

Before, though she had obeyed his commands, he could sense that a part of her remained, but when she had given herself to the portal, that too had been taken from her. She had seen what lay in wait at the end of the world, and it had robbed her of her soul.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “So powerful.” Jaqen had chosen her well. It was a pity that he couldn’t have lived to see her true fate come to fruition.

“You will go to the last,” Qyburn said after a moment. “And you will open the final portal within.” He searched her gaze, but she gave no sign of understanding. “Your sister will come, no doubt. Her heart draws her to you, even as yours has grown black with rot, and she will find you once more. When she does, you will kill her, and her husband, and the boy that accompanies them. Feed their corpses to the portal as sacrifice and then…” He cupped her chin and rubbed his thumb across her cheek. “Together, we will watch this world burn.”

**************

Sansa stared up at the ruins with a heavy heart. The night before, she had dreamt of finding Arya again, but when she had reached her sister’s side, her skin was pale and cold, and Qyburn had merely laughed above her broken body. She woke trembling and only barely managed to drag herself to the chamber pot in the corner before losing what meager offerings her stomach had to give.

For a moment, she had feared that it was not a dream but a vision. Arya had told her that the cycle of revelation had been awoken within her, and she remembered the tales of the prophet who had once roamed the hamlet. Of how his glimpse into the world beyond had driven him mad, and heightened his gift of foresight.

“I’ll lead the way,” Destain said, flipping his pistol from its holster to his hand. Sansa missed the look that passed between the two men as Sandor nodded, and together, they entered the final ruin.

As in the others, they were met with a long hall, and they made their way down it cautiously, listening with each step for anything other than the sound of their own breathing.

The light of Sansa’s mace illuminated the narrow walls about them, casting its light upon the dark shapes that began their spread across the pale stone. Painted cultists writhed and bowed once more, prone before an abysmal portal.

They hesitated for a moment at the fork, and as Sansa looked to the right, something caught her eye. Among the other figures of the mural, another had been added in this ruin. It was a giant of a man, bent at the spine but still towering over the cultists. His robes trailed along behind him as his figure paced the length of the wall, and about his neck hung a ghastly testament to his madness: a pair of bloodied eyes, torn from his now empty sockets, blind to all but what was to come.

“The Prophet,” Sandor murmured, his fingers brushing across the flaking paint. He had seen the same figure in the journals he had taken from the mansion.

As he spoke, a sound began to echo down the hall, from behind the door at its end. At first, it was merely the whisper of cloth on the stone ground, then the shuffling of something great moving about within the room, then, a chuckle. It started softly, so faint they could barely hear it, but it grew, to a laugh, and then a cackle that made their blood run cold.

The three companions exchanged a look, and in the end, it was Sandor who stepped forward, drawing his sword.

When the door opened, the light of Sansa’s mace grew dim, and the laughter continued from the far corner. They could see nothing, and as Destain fumbled in his pack for a torch, the man spoke, his tone one of mad amusement.

“Stark and Clegane, back again.”

The torch flared to light, but the room was large, far too large for its flame to encompass. It revealed rows of pews before them, arranged as though it had once been an abbey. And in the corner, barely visible, still shrouded in shadow: a towering figure.

“Your good parents never told you the story of the old fool they locked away?” He chuckled once more, and an almost childlike glee colored his words. “How is your family? The brave Lyanna? Righteous Eddard? Loyal Alvor? Is old Tytos still howling?” His laughter rose once more, and Sandor’s hand clenched tightly about the hilt of his sword as the prophet shuffled forward, crooked and yellow teeth grinning manically beneath a pair of empty sockets.

“Why don’t we finish what your parents couldn’t?”

“You know nothing of who our parents were!” Sansa cried out in anger, her cheeks flushed red and hot at the taunt in the prophet’s tone. She gripped her mace tightly and strode forward to meet him, determination in her gaze.

He watched her make her advance and it was as she stood nearly before him that he spoke again. “I know far more than you realize.” With frightening speed for a man his size, he moved forward, reaching toward her. His hands found her cheeks and forced her eyes to meet his, frenzied and glittering in the torchlight as they hung from his neck. _ “See…”_

Sansa grew rigid at his touch, and her mouth opened in a silent scream as her eyes grew wide with horrified realization. As Sandor rushed toward her, Destain took a shot, hitting the prophet in the shoulder and breaking his concentration. When Sansa was free from his grasp, she crumpled to the floor.

With a cry of rage, Sandor slashed out with his sword, slicing him across the chest. Though the strike cut deep and a steady stream of blood began to pour from beneath the tattered rags he wore, the prophet merely batted aside the blade, his hands reaching out blindly.

“You are not like your father,” he said, almost musingly. “When I knew your father, he fought only because Eddard Stark commanded it. But you have something to fight for, and your love makes you weak.”

His grasping hands caught Sandor’s arm as he slashed forward again and he gripped him with surprising force. As he struggled, the prophet groped about, and his hands found the ruin of Sandor’s cheek as he gave his calamitous prognostication.

“You too must _see_…”

Sansa was scrambling to her feet once more as Sandor was caught in the prophet’s snare, and Destain swore loudly as his fingers fumbled to reload, dropping his bullet on the ground. 

The vestal raised her mace and brought it down hard on the hard on the prophet’s outstretched arm, breaking his grip on her husband and forcing herself between them as Sandor staggered back.

_“Sanctus ignis!”_

The bolt of flame that answered her cry struck him firmly, and the prophet wailed as his rags caught fire. “They all burned!” he warbled, a glassy and sickening panic forming in the eyes that hung from his neck. “I saw them in the flames! I warned them, but they would not see!”

Sandor’s blade struck out, and he severed the horrible dangling eyes from his neck. As he cried in pain and anger, they fell to the floor, and one began to roll. It found its place at Destain’s boot as he bent to grab the fallen bullet. His eyes fell to meet its unseeing gaze, and as he did, he felt a sudden chill, and a swirl of images whirled about in his mind. He saw blood, and shadow, and flames, and heard cries of death and of pain. His head swam with the sudden rush of knowledge, and when he struggled to his feet, he heard the prophet’s final words.

“Thank you. After all this time…I am free.”

Trembling, the highwayman stumbled forward, and he could see in his companions’ gazes that they too had seen the prophet’s vision. Whether it was a scene from the past, or their future, they did not know, but it left them shaken. 

For a moment, they simply stood there, staring at the corpse before them. Once, he had been a man, but the mayor had turned him, twisted him, revealed to him the secrets of what lie beyond, and it had changed him into the monster that had terrorized the hamlet so long ago.

“We should…” Destain looked back behind them, toward the hall, and his voice trailed off. It was dark in the rest of the ruins, and the light from the torch sent the scattered and confusing images to the front of his mind once more. Sandor and Sansa nodded slowly in agreement, and together, they continued on.

The room at the end of the hall was an armory by the look of it, with dozens of weapons, long since rusted and abandoned. A few of the racks had empty slots, and beneath one was a trail of blood, not brown and stained with age, but fresh, and still wet. Sansa quietly whispered what they were all thinking.

“Arya.”

Grim-faced, they moved on, and they were barely a few feet down the next hall when they heard what sounded like the crackle of a campfire, and a deep red glow appeared from within one of the nearby rooms.

They approached it slowly, and as they stood in the doorway, they stared silently at the source of the strange light. In the center of the room were four figures, huddled about a campfire. Their images were faint and shimmered every so often, casting their russet glow across the walls. They were the work of the prophet, a lingering memory he had placed within their minds.

Destain looked at the four adventurers in confusion, but Sandor and Sansa’s eyes were filled with tears as they regarded them. Slowly, Sansa moved toward one of them, a stern looking man in crusader’s armor. She sank to her knees before the ethereal figure and Sandor joined her, placing an arm around her shoulders.

After a moment, they sprang to life. A deep frown formed on the face of the woman, barely visible beneath the brim of her pointed cap. The bearded man idly stroked the dog at his side, and the large warrior with the massive mace had a hand clenched in a fist, shaking it at their leader.

“How dare you let that monster live, Ned!” he cried out, and Sansa let out a broken sob at the mention of her father’s name.

Eddard remained stoic, his hands absently turning his helmet in his lap. “That man is as much a victim of the mayor’s crimes and atrocities as us all, Vayon,” he said calmly. “Just because his pain comes with a terrible gift does not make him any less so. We are not murderers.”

The man at arms regarded him with disgust and disbelief. “God, Ned. You saw what he showed us. We all saw. The hamlet in flames…the streets run red with blood…”

“What if he escapes?” Lyanna asked quietly, echoing Vayon’s fears. “What if he uses his powers on the innocents in the hamlet?” Sansa reached a hand out toward the aunt she had never met, but it merely passed through the translucent image, causing a ripple in the fabricated memory. “Is that truly any better than death?”

The hold of the prophet’s magic began to fade, and the images wavered and grew pale. Though the question remained unanswered, there was a shadow of doubt in Eddard’s eyes, and Sansa found herself relieved at the notion that once, her father had been as unsure about his actions as she felt now.

A shaky breath left her as the memory faded to nothingness, and Sandor’s hand fell to rest on the stones where his father had sat many years before. His life with Sansa had helped him to overcome the horrors of their past, but facing Alvor’s figure sent a wave of guilt surging through him once again. If only he could have saved him, saved all of them.

“Who were they?” Destain asked quietly from the doorway. 

After a moment, Sansa replied, her hand moving to hold her husband’s. “They were the four heroes who beat back this darkness, so many years ago. The ones who killed the mayor, and saved the hamlet, for a time.”

“They were Vayon Poole, Alvor Clegane, and Lyanna and Eddard Stark,” Sandor finished. “All taken before you came to our cursed town.”

Revelation dawned on the younger man’s features at their names, and he bowed his head respectively as Sansa reached for the cross around her neck. “May God rest their souls.”

**************

Qyburn stood in the large antechamber of the final ruins, watching as Arya did her work. She had obeyed him without hesitation, but he wondered if it was truly his orders that she followed. He had plans to rule the world that rose from the ashes, and he doubted that her new master wished the same.

His father had gone mad when he had reached the end, but Qyburn was not so weak. He would stare into the face of what lie within the earth, and after it had laid the world to ruin, he would cast it aside. 

There was a spell within one of his father’s old books, written in a language that few could understand and even fewer could read. The portal had granted him the power to do so, and in its pages he had found an incantation that would serve his ambitions. In the end, he would take the being’s power, and rule in its stead.

_“Nog gnaiih!” _

The floor of the room swirled with the thick black liquid that marked the realm of the world’s creators. It was a massive portal, and from within it, the heart of darkness would rise.

_“Gof’nn uln shogg!” _

Two dozen cultists had followed him to their end, and they had fallen to their knees around the portal, their hands bending to touch the portal’s edge as they bowed in reverence.

_“Tharanak n’ghft! Tharanak n’gha!”_

Arya was high above the portal, her body suspended in the air as she spoke the words of the ritual. There was complete surrender and understanding in the blackness of her eyes, and not for the first time, Qyburn questioned his own actions.

She had grown powerful, far more than he had ever believed she could. Had he left her to her own devices, she would have still been a broken child, angry at the world, but powerless against it. He wondered whether he had saved his own life by turning her mind, or if she would still yet be the end of it.

_“F’fm’latgh geb, athg k’yarnak f’orr’e thanarak f’gnaiih geb shugg!” _

In the end, only time would tell.

**************

They followed the trail of blood from the armory through the winding halls. Far in the distance, they could hear the sound of chanting, and it set their nerves on end.

Sansa led the way with the light of her mace and Destain took up the rear, clutching his torch tightly in his hand.

He had stumbled and fallen behind a bit when he saw a pair of glittering eyes in the shadows of a nearby doorway.

“Are you afraid of the dark?” The man’s gaze flickered with mad glee, and he giggled as he blew on the torch, its light wavering but staying strong. With trembling fingers, the highwayman reached for the gun at his hip and placed it squarely between the man’s eyes before pulling the trigger. He shuddered to think of what they could have become in the face of the prophet’s power, and hurried after his companions.

With each step they took, the voices grew louder, and the great braziers lit within the final chamber cast their ruddy glow across the stones as their boots fell heavily upon them. There was no turning back, and they each feared what they might face within.

_“Hrii n’ghft: fhtagn, lw’nafh, vulgtlagln.” _

The sight that greeted them was horrific. They had all seen their share of death, and Sandor and Sansa had lived through the destruction of their home, but nothing could have prepared them for what lie in that final room.

The bloody hand on Arya’s cheek pulsed with her words, and from within the portal, a reaching hand had emerged, grasping blindly as the cultists’ chant continued. What it belonged to, they could not even comprehend, and soon, it would join their world once more.

“Arya, no!” Sansa’s cry was all but drowned out by the rhythmic chorus of the ritual, but far above them, the sorceress turned her gaze. There was no recognition in her eyes, no sympathy or regret. They shone with only cruelty, and the desire for revenge.

“You cannot stop me,” she said, though the voice was not entirely her own. “They will pay for what they did.”

“Who is ‘they?’” Sansa begged. “There is only one man who betrayed you, and you follow him blindly to your own ruin!”

For a moment, she hesitated, but then spoke again, the same flat acceptance to her words. “You know what I have lost. Just because you found happiness does not mean that I shouldn’t get my vengeance.”

“Then get it!” The vestal yelled, her eyes filling with tears. “Kill the man who killed our family! Stop this madness and send him to the deepest of all the hells!”

She turned her gaze to where Qyburn watched from the head of the portal, her knuckles white as she gripped the cross that hung from her neck.

“Do not listen to her, Arya,” the sorcerer said calmly. “I had no hand in the hamlet’s destruction. It was that man who killed your family.” He pointed an accusatory finger toward Sandor, who snarled and tightened his grip about his sword. “He ordered them to your home, where his brother murdered them.”

At that, the gleam in Arya’s eyes grew brighter, and slowly, she began to descend from her place above the portal. When her feet touched its swirling ichor, a coil of thick black smoke enveloped her, and from it she drew a weapon. It was a glaive wrought of blackened steel, and though she drew it from the mist, it was solid in her hands, and wickedly sharp.

“You,” she said softly, her gaze fixed on Sandor. “He speaks true, doesn’t he? They could have fought the Vvulf’s men, but you left them to die, and then, as if that weren’t enough, you took the only family I had left.”

“No, Arya,” Sansa pleaded. “He’s lying to you!”

She stalked forward, and with terrifying speed, she swung the blade forward, only narrowly missing Sandor’s head. He moved to meet her and growled from between clenched teeth.

“Don’t make me do this.”

Arya gave no reply, and their blades met with a metallic clang over the continued chanting of the cultists. As they fought, one of the robed men was pulled within the churning portal, and the hand reached higher, its bony fingers curling into a fist.

“He’s lying to you, girl!” Sandor shouted, landing a deep cut across Arya’s arm. “He hired Gregor to attack the hamlet!”

“You can’t trick me,” she yelled in reply, lashing out again as she began to bleed.

Behind them, Destain readied his pistol, and waited for a clear shot.

“Please, Arya,” Sansa cried, moving to stand between them. “We’re telling you the truth. If you could only see through his lies you would know what it is that he’s done!”

There was no humanity in the pitch blackness of her eyes, but they were wet with tears as she raised her glaive, and she slashed it across Sansa’s chest, the edge of the blade catching between the plates of her armor. “You do not understand! You haven’t seen what I have!”

Sansa fell to her knees with a strangled gasp, and her eyes watched the blood that flowed through her fingers with disbelief.

Sandor let out a cry of grief and anger and Destain steadied his pistol, breathing in sharply and then exhaling as he squeezed the trigger.

As he had promised, he shot true, and his bullet found its mark.

The fist uncurled as a hole was blast through it, and a shriek of fury echoed from deep within the portal. The rhythm of the cultists’ chant wavered, and as Sandor’s blade made its arc toward Arya’s neck, Sansa cried out in panic.

“Sandor, _no! _”

Her cry only barely broke his focus, and his sword took several strands of Arya’s hair as it brushed past her neck. When Sandor looked to his good-sister, a pair of grey eyes met his own, and in them, he saw confusion and regret.

“Arya…” Sansa reached her hands out toward her sister as she sobbed, and the blood that coated them smeared across Arya’s clothes as she fell to her knees.

“Oh God, Sansa,” she murmured. “What have I done?”

When she merely continued to cry against her shoulder, Arya sighed heavily, and she looked to where Sandor stood above them.

“It’s true isn’t it? About Qyburn, and…” She trailed off and Sandor nodded silently.

After a moment, Arya nodded in return, and she stood, allowing Sandor to lift Sansa and cradle her against his chest. As he retreated toward their companion, she turned, and her eyes met Qyburn’s across the portal, clear, and bright with anger.

“I did what had to be done,” he sneered as she began to move toward him. “You’ve seen what’s to become of this world. I needed it to bleed so it could bring its end upon itself once more, as it should have in my father’s time.”

“Perhaps it is time for our world to end,” she conceded. “But I swear to God that you won’t be alive to see what becomes of it.”

A flicker of fear rose in Qyburn’s eyes, and as she approached the portal’s edge, he stepped forward, within its grasp. “It is too late, Arya Stark. You still foolishly consider yourself an entity separate from the whole. I know better. And I will show you.”

He gave himself to the grasping of the hand that still reached from the portal, and as it pulled him within, Arya cried out. _“Bug, hai!” _

Wailing, the creature within was swallowed by the inky blackness, and Arya turned only briefly before following it in its descent.

“Go.” She nodded toward Sandor and he returned the gesture. “Take her, and leave me. It is time I earned my vengeance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Nog gnaiih!” [Come, father!]
> 
> “Gof’nn uln shogg!” [Children summon realm of darkness!]
> 
> “Tharanak n’ghft! Tharanak n’gha!” [Bring darkness! Bring death]
> 
> “F’fm’latgh geb, athg k’yarnak f’orr’e thanarak f’gnaiih geb shugg!” [They burn here, swear to share their souls to bring their father here to the realm of Earth!]
> 
> “Hrii n’ghft: fhtagn, lw’nafh, vulgtlagln.” [Followers of darkness: sleep, dream, pray.]
> 
> “Bug, hai!” [Go, now!]


	14. Victory, Such as it Is

Sandor was at his wife’s side in the sanitarium when he heard footsteps behind him. He was silent for a long moment and Destain had moved to stand beside him before he spoke.

“Why did you do it?”

The highwayman looked down at Sansa and sighed. She had been in and out of feverish dreams for days now, and there was still no word of her sister. They were beginning to fear that she may never return.

“After everything: Vvulf’s attack, and what happened to Arya, Sansa still had hope,” he replied. Sandor had spent the past few days telling him of the events that had led to his arrival in the hamlet, and he found that he understood the younger Stark’s actions. He too would have wanted revenge, no matter the cost. “That night in the ruins…” He frowned and shook his head. “She was there on the ground, bleeding. She had every reason to believe that her sister was gone, but when I looked at her, there was still hope in her eyes. Somehow, she still believed that Arya remained, and I thought she deserved my trust.”

Sandor nodded slowly, running his thumb absently across one of Sansa’s hands as he held it. “Thank you then. You’ve done more for us than we’ve deserved.”

Destain shrugged slightly at that, and looked down again as Sansa murmured something and shifted restlessly in her sleep. Sandor sighed heavily at the movement.

“I suppose you’ll be leaving soon.”

The younger man nodded in affirmation and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat, his eyes twinkling as he smirked. “Aye. Not sure how much longer I can stand to look at that face of yours every day.” When Sandor snorted and managed a weak smile, he grew serious again. “I’ve never been much good at staying in one place for long.” He jerked his chin toward Sansa. “Is she going to be alright?”

Sandor shrugged. He wanted to believe what the vestals had told him, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw his mother’s body, and he feared that Sansa would meet a similar fate. “They say she’ll recover, in time.” When Destain simply nodded and shuffled his feet, he continued softly. “Caunter told me that she’s pregnant.” The highwayman’s eyes widened and Sandor took a shaky breath. “She says we’re lucky the wound wasn’t any worse, or we might’ve lost the child.”

“Perhaps your wife’s faith has finally been rewarded.”

“Perhaps,” Sandor agreed quietly. “But if Arya never returns, it may all be futile. I don’t know what she saw on the other side, but if she fails, I don’t want to raise a child in a world that’s doomed to end.”

Destain nodded solemnly and looked to the cross that still hung from Sansa’s neck. “Then we’ll wait, and pray to God that she succeeds.”

**************

Arya had been to the other realm before. The first time, deep beneath the manor, she had caught a glimpse of it as it had brushed against her mind. The images had been fleeting, but she understood even then that there was a great power that did not exist in the realm of mortals, and which could bring her the death she desired.

Each time after, it tore more of her soul from her, until she was changed into the weapon that the heart had chosen her to be. 

But now, she saw it for what it truly was, and it repulsed her. The walls about her rose and fell as if they breathed, and the flesh they were carved from was slick with the black poison that had once run through her veins.

She heard Qyburn’s voice before she could see him, and it was filled with an almost horrified awe.

“Behold…the heart of darkness! Progenitor of life, father and mother, alpha and omega! Our creator... and our destroyer.”

She stepped forward and held her blade tightly in her hands as they trembled.

The man who had called for her family’s death stood before the thing which once his father had failed to summon, dangerously close to success.

“At last…” he breathed. “The twisted heart of the world is laid bare for sword or supplication…”

The creature was unlike anything else. It pulsed steadily at the center of the earth, breathing both life and death to the world that lie somehow parallel to the realm in which it made its home. Many times before it had been unleashed and had destroyed the mortal world, with the help of men like Qyburn and his father. Few times, it had been beaten back, but it was only a matter of time before another came, perverse curiosity drawing them to the forbidden knowledge of the world beyond.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” Qyburn asked her as she moved to his side. The heart watched them through its dark and empty eyes, its mouth issuing forth wailing cries that shook the mortals to their cores. It had the power to destroy them with nothing more than its mind, and yet without them, it could not be released.

“Life feeds on life,” he said ominously, his hood abandoned about his shoulders and his eyes mirroring the darkness of what lie before them. “In your petty pursuit of vengeance, you consumed those who rallied to your cause and in so doing you strengthened the Thing, accelerating the end. This is as it should be.” He turned and met her gaze. “It is why you are here.”

Arya felt a horrible realization dawn at his words, and her mind filled with images of those she had killed, and those who had died. It was the blood of the cultists that throbbed within the heart’s grotesque body, the blood of the heroes who had tried to defeat them, the blood of her lover, of her parents and brothers.

“We are chained here forever, you and I,” Qyburn said, almost musingly. “At the end of the world.” He met her eyes, a shade of grey that was darker than it once had been. “You have the power that I’ve sought for so long. In the end, it chose you, and not I. Free yourself. Rouse the thing, and embrace the ineffable cosmic hideousness that lives within us all.”

Arya fought against the darkness in his eyes, but even as he spoke, she could feel the horrid strength inside of her, writhing as it sought to free itself and do what it had been created to do. With a cry that unleashed all the pain and fury that had welled up inside her since the attack, she slashed out at him with her conjured blade, and there was shock and in confusion in his gaze as he watched it slice across his stomach.

“You do not control me!” she yelled, trembling with the force of the emotions that raged within her. She spoke to both the sorcerer and the creature, though her voice wavered with doubt and fear. There was a battle being fought for her mind, and she did not know if she could win.

“You cannot stop this,” Qyburn said, calm despite the blood that had begun to stain his robes. “In the end, another will come. My secrets will be uncovered, the darkness will rise, and the cycle will continue, as it always has and always will.”

“Your secrets are nothing.” Arya spat, and she struck out again, spilling more of his black, brackish blood across the ground. “Once I end your pathetic life, I will burn your work, and that of your father. Everything: every note, every spell, every secret will be destroyed, and the tunnels with them.”

Qyburn laughed, and blood sprayed from between his clenched teeth, a manic light in his eyes. “You think that will do anything? My secrets are still very much alive. They live within you. It is you that will take my place, as is your fate. You will begin it all anew, as I did, and as my father did before me. As countless have, and countless will, until the end of time itself.”

Shaking, she turned to face them both, and the creature regarded her with unspeakable fury in its deadly gaze. “I will end you for what you did to the people I loved, and even if it means my death, I will not let this world fall.”

Even as she spoke, she felt herself slipping away. The heart had a power that mortals could not comprehend, and she felt it tearing at her mind, freeing the darkness she had tried to repress and spreading it through her trembling frame.

As long as the thing lived, it would always win, for there was no power that could stand against it once it had been released upon the world. Only within this horrid other realm could it be destroyed, and only then by someone with the strength to defeat it. 

Arya fell to her knees as she screamed, and the creature let out a cry of rage as she fought against its grip. Beside her, Qyburn spoke, strengthening the heart as it sought to break her.

_“Ch’ ftaghu shugg.”_

Arya’s vision blurred as she cried helplessly and the destroyer of men filled her mind with a barrage of terrible images. She saw Jaqen’s body, and Rickon’s torn hands. She saw in a mere second the thousands of times that the cycle had been fulfilled, and she wailed as she was forced to watch the world burn, endlessly, from the beginning of time and infinitely onward.

Her shaking hand reached for the dagger that lay beneath her armor, and her eyes closed against the darkness that filled them. Qyburn had told her that this was her fate, and she understood with frightening clarity how futile it was to fight. But she could not surrender. There were still those who lived, and if she gave herself to the heart, they too would be forced to see the truth, and it would break them. It was as the sorcerer had said: the twisted heart of the world was laid bare for sword or supplication, and she would not choose the latter.

Qyburn stood with his arms raised, and his voice continued its chanting as the heart swelled and writhed before them. Arya staggered to her feet, and she drew from its power as she yelled out in helpless rage. 

_“Fm’latgh geb hlirgh! Bug gnaiih ngkadishtu n’gha!”_

Her eyes burned bright and black with the power of the realm of darkness, but her mind was clear. The heart obeyed her words, and it reached its hands out to clutch at Qyburn’s robes. He felt only fear as he went unto his maker, and as Arya watched him get swallowed within the beating heart, she struck out with her dagger, drawing it across the thin flesh of the monster’s pulsating body.

It let out a cry of pain and fury that scattered her mind and she screamed over the sound of it. Its hands clawed at her, scratching her skin, but she fought back, her dagger striking again and again as its blood sprayed across her face.

In times past, it had been beaten back by groups of warriors who had learned the truth of the world, and though Arya stood alone, she fought with Eddard’s bravery, Alvor’s devotion, Vayon’s might, and Lyanna’s cunning. She could hear their voices as she slashed at the heart’s grasping hands, and they gave her the strength she needed.

_“Nothing will break me!”_

_“For justice!”_

_“All into formation and we are invincible!”_

_“One piece at a time, sweet-thing!”_

“Get back!” she cried, and with a final stroke, she tore through its quivering flesh, releasing the blood that pulsed within, the blood of those she had once loved. It poured out over her helplessly trembling body and she covered her ears against the creature’s dying cries and the screams of the souls that had been released.

The blood of its creations had brought it new life, and hastened its death as it flowed freely from the flesh that held it. _You have not died in vain,_ Arya thought as the walls of the other realm began to rot and decay around her. _Whatever else I may have done, you have been avenged._ She saw the faint images of the dead behind her eyelids, watching as her final vengeance was wrought: her mother with an expression of pride, her father with one of peace, at last. 

A great swirling blackness rose to meet her and she surrendered herself to it. _If nothing else…know that._

**************

Time was a strange thing within the realm of darkness. Where in the mortal world it was a rigid and unchanging thing, it was malleable and compliant in the other. Though Arya had spent mere minutes trapped within, when she came to in the ruins, nearly a week had passed, and the hamlet had lost hope for her return.

The bodies of the cultists that remained were beginning to rot and she walked through them as the fog over her mind began to fade. As the other realm had collapsed, her own had come to meet her and she did not know how long she had been unconscious on the cold stone of the ruins.

Slowly, she followed the trail of blood that led through the halls, and her heart clenched as muddled memories of the fight returned to her mind. She remembered Sansa on the ground, her hands stained with blood, and though she could not fully remember her own actions, she knew that she had been the one to hurt her sister so.

It was raining when she emerged, and she turned her face toward the sky, allowing the rain to wash the bloodied handprint from her cheek. She could still feel its presence deep within her, but she would be branded by it no longer. When the heart had shrieked and cried in its final moments, she had taken the part of it that lived within her and banished it deep inside her soul, where she would force it to remain until it died with her and the cycle was broken.

Nearly a year had passed since she had first succumbed to the allure of the other realm, and she felt strange in her own mind again. Where once she had only thoughts of vengeance, she now felt guilt and shame warring within her as she was forced to face her actions.

The hamlet was quiet and still as she returned, and she was able to move through the streets without being followed by the stares of those she had betrayed and abandoned. In the end, though, she had been victorious, and she hoped that would enough to earn their forgiveness.

_Victory…_ She thought, but the darkness buried deep inside her sneered at the idea. _A hollow and ridiculous notion._ She knew what she had seen, and what the heart had made her understand. Humanity was born of that horrible thing, made from it, and would be returned to it, in time. _The great family of man…a profusion of errant flesh! Multiplying, swarming, living, dying…_

She shuddered, but could not banish the images from her mind. For all the ages of time, it had been true. Qyburn’s notes would smolder and burn, but the knowledge would live on within her, and in time, she might fall to it once more.

_Until the stars align in their inexorable formation and what sleeps is roused once more, _ the voice inside her continued. _To hatch from this fragile shell of earth and rock and bring our inescapable end. This is your fate. So seek solace in a manner befitting your lineage and take up your nugatory vigil, haunted forever by that sickening prose, echoing through the infinite blackness of space and time…_

_Ruin will come to our world. _

**************

When Sansa awoke in the sanitarium to hear that Arya had not returned, she fell into grief once more and Sandor watched helplessly as she wandered about the hamlet with a distant gaze, donned in the black of mourning.

He had only just managed to coax her to eat for the sake of the baby when Arya appeared at their doorstep, and Sansa collapsed at her feet with sobs of relief. Arya knelt beside her, and they held each other tightly, as they once had before the bodies of their parents and brothers.

As Arya wiped the tears from her sister’s cheeks and Sandor helped her to her feet, she spoke solemnly. “It isn’t finished. There is still something we must do.”

Together, they gathered the notes and journals that had found their place in Eddard’s former study, and with the eyes of the hamlet upon them, they made their way to the mansion above the moors. At Sandor’s urging, Destain had remained, for a time, and he agreed to join them, torch in hand.

The ancient parchment caught quickly, and the fire consumed all that lay within the crumbling walls. As Arya had promised, every scrap was put to the torch, and the path that so many had taken before was turned to ash and smoke.

Arya remained long after the others had retreated, and she stood amongst the rubble, the last testament to a cycle that had never been broken. It was there that Destain found her.

The woman before him was a stranger, and yet, he felt as though he understood her. He had heard of who she had once been, and seen who she had become. The Arya that remained was neither, and it was in that fact that the cycle’s inevitability yet remained.

He had saved Arya’s life, and in doing so, had enabled the banishment of the darkness. Perhaps, in that way, he had earned her her redemption, if she chose to seek it.

His belongings were strapped across his back when he came to her, and he regarded her with something akin to regret in his gaze. When she did not speak, he pulled the pistol from his hip and held it out. She took it carefully and when she met his eyes, he knew that she understood. A single bullet lay within, a symbol of what had been, or what could be.

“They wouldn’t understand,” she said quietly. “If this is what must be.”

The young man shrugged at that, and with a single parting reply, he returned to the Old Road. “Every road ends…”

**************

Though Sandor’s fears never truly left him, the vestals were able to do for Sansa what they could not for his mother, and she gave birth to two healthy sons, Eddard and Destain. Sandor cried as he held them for the first time, and Arya stood at Sansa’s side with a small smile.

“Should we tell them?” Sansa whispered, her face wan and pale as she lay in the bed between them. “As our fathers did when we were young?”

“Someday,” Sandor replied. “When it’s time, they should know the truth. Though they cannot repeat them, they should know of our past mistakes.”

As Arya looked into their innocent eyes, she felt her fears return, and that voice that was not quite her own whispered at the back of her mind. _“They cannot, but you can, and in time, you will.”_She shook her head to clear her thoughts, but it softly caressed the part of her which she had fought so hard to bury.

_“What are you before the hand of Fate?” _

**************

Under Sansa’s leadership, the hamlet returned to its former glory, and with time, it began to grow. The laughter of children could be heard in the streets once more, and even for those who had lived through the times of darkness, it was a happy place.

Destain and Eddard Clegane were raised in a world that their parents had never known, and they listened with avid curiosity to the tales their father told of their namesakes. In time, they came to understand the hamlet’s history, but the full truth was hidden from them, for Arya’s name was stained with blood, and she could not bear their scorn. 

Arya never forgot the man she had once loved, and she spent her years alone, often paying visits to the departed that lie outside the abbey walls. Sandor and Sansa were never far, and she dearly loved their children, but she felt like an intruder in their lives, and so as time wore on, she kept her distance.

Her nights were often plagued with nightmares even as the others found peace, and she woke some nights to flickering images of death and destruction, twisted words on her lips as the darkness rose within her once again. She feared for the hamlet and for those she loved who remained, and she did not know if the knowledge inside of her would be content to rest forever.

She resisted the pull that sought to drag her beyond the hamlet’s walls, and with each day that passed, she grew more and more frightened of what Qyburn had called her fate. Her once clear mind grew muddled with confusion and paranoia, and she could no longer escape the dread of losing control of herself.

It was as young Eddard was just learning to use a sword and Lyanna was taking her first steps that Arya left the hamlet behind. She went out to the warrens, to the blackened stones she had so often sat by as she dreamt of revenge. It was where she had first loved Jaqen, and where she felt his presence most.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, she laid her hands on the cold stone and bent her forehead between them, relishing the sharp chill against her feverish skin. Fate had given her a choice, and finally, she had made it. She would not allow the evil to rise again, and so its secrets would die with her, as she had always known they must. That was the price for her victory, and it was one she had chosen to pay.

She drew the pistol from beneath her tattered coat and held it, its tarnished steel cold and heavy in her hands. For many years, she had left it in the rubble of the mansion, where she knew it would go undiscovered, for she was winning the battle over her soul. With time, she began to feel herself losing control, and so she returned to it when she couldn’t sleep, fingers brushing against the dull metal and toying with the single bullet within.

_Every road ends…_

Sansa would not forgive her, she knew, but with time perhaps she could understand. She would have Sandor and the children to look after her, and at last Arya could return to those who had died, her soul at peace knowing the cycle had finally been broken.

She saw their faces behind her eyelids as she raised the pistol to her temple, and Qyburn’s voice rang in her ears.

_We are chained here forever, you and I. At the end of the world…_

Her hands were steady in those final moments, and she breathed deeply.

_Free yourself…_

She opened her eyes once more to take a final look at the world she was leaving behind. The trigger fit smoothly beneath her finger, and as she pulled it, her eyes blazed with startling clarity, an eerie and empty shade of black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Ch’ ftaghu shugg.” [Cross over the boundary to the realm of Earth.]
> 
> “Fm’latgh geb hlirgh! Bug gnaiih ngkadishtu n’gha!” [Burn here, heretic! Go to your father and know death!]


End file.
